PHOTOdocument by betsey wolfson

Tw e n t i e t h - C e n t u r y A m e r i c a n P h o t o g r a p h y a n d F o u n d Te x t

Maggie Dethloff me a d a r t museum | a m h e r s t c o l l e g e

H O T O document investigates “found text” — words and phrases that already existed in the environment and were not added by the artists — featured in 32 photographs from the collection of the Mead Art Museum. Following the development of documentary-style photography in the United States from the First World War to the dawn of the digital age, this exhibition catalogue is organized roughly chronologically and according to subject, such as the cinema, and concept, such as economics. With their combinations of found commercial text and imagery, the photographs considered here enable an exploration of the relationship between the American Dream represented in commercial advertising and social realities captured by the “truthful” lens of the camera. Considered together, the photographs offer a compelling glimpse into changing American identities over the course of the twentieth-century and embody the photographer Joel Meyerowitz’s notion of “the Great American Novel in photographs.”

Tw e n t i e t h - C e n t u r y A m e r i c a n P h o t o g r a p h y a n d F o u n d Te x t

Maggie Dethloff me a d a r t museum | a m h e r s t c o l l e g e

Published in conjunction with the exhibition PHOTOdocument: 20th-Century American Photography and Found Text, March 30 – July 22, 2012. The publication of this catalogue has been supported by the Templeton Photography Fund. Mead Art Museum Amherst College Amherst, Massachusetts © 2012 The Trustees of Amherst College Amherst, Massachusetts ISBN # 978-0-914337-33-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2012933983 Stephen Petegorsky Photography. © The Trustees of Amherst College Copyedited by Katherine Duke Designed by Office B | Betsey Wolfson Printed by GHP Media, West Haven, Connecticut on the cover:

Louis Faurer | Globe Theatre, NY, NY | 1950 | AC 1986.114 © Mark Faurer

Contents Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 PHOTOdocument

Homophones for Wit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1920s–1930s: Face(s) of the City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Selling the Candidate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

1940s–1950s: Dinner and a Movie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Weegee’s and Warhol’s Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

The Embrace of Coca-Cola . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

1960s–1970s: Taking Back the Word . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Acknowledgments

HIS E X HIBIT ION WOULD NOT HAV E BEEN POSSIBLE without the monumental support and assistance of many.

First and foremost, I am exceedingly grateful to Elizabeth Barker for guiding me in this endeavor and modeling the level of

I wish to thank Bryn Geffert and the helpful staff at the Frost Library at Amherst College, not least among them the Interlibrary Loan team. I wish to thank all who assisted me in obtaining the necessary

professionalism, commitment, and creativity necessary to reach

any lofty goal. I thank her especially for her high expectations

but one from which I emerged more competent. An additional

and generous confidence in my ability to achieve this lofty goal.

thank you is due to Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee for her assistance

I wish to thank Tim Gilfillan for attractively matting, framing, and hanging the photographs and for deftly applying the vinyl lettering for the exhibition. Thanks go to Stephen Fisher for his role in arranging

in assigning titles and dates to the photographs taken by James Van Der Zee. I would sincerely like to thank Robert J. Bezucha and Sura Levine,

photography for this catalogue and his guidance in the process of

who, together with Lizzie, Katrina, and Bettina, served on the Mellon

Fellowship selection committee and granted me this invaluable and

reproduction fee invoices and the logistics of exhibition programming,

unparalleled experience.

along with Heath Cummings. I extend my thanks to Pamela Russell for

I could not have succeeded if it weren’t for the care, encourage-

her direction in program planning. All of my colleagues at the Mead

ment, and advice of my loving parents, Genie and Lloyd Dethloff.

Art Museum merit special thanks for their steadfast assistance,

Thank you. For teaching me how to think and write critically, I also

encouragement, and friendship: David Dashiell, Katrina Greene,

thank my undergraduate art history professors Craig Felton, Dana

Angelique Harrell, Ashley Hogan, Bettina Jungen, Rachel Rogol, and

Leibsohn, and Frazer Ward of Smith College.

Miloslava Waldman. Randall Griffey deserves colossal thanks for his collaboration and mentorship throughout my time at the Mead. I am enormously admiring of Betsey Wolfson’s eye-catching

Maggie Dethloff Andrew W. Mellon Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Fellow

design, which beautifully captures the mood of the exhibition. Thanks are also due to my copyeditor, Katherine Duke, and proofreader, Pam Wilkinson, for their sharp eyes and astute suggestions – this text would not be so clear, consistent, or graceful without them.

Preface

W O P H O T O G R A P H S F E A T U R I N G B O L D T E X T sparked

have been examined to a significant degree, the related topic of

my interest: Peter Sekaer’s Colored Movie Entrance, Anniston,

advertising-in-photography appears to have received little attention.

Alabama, of 1936, and Robert Frank’s White Tower, 14th Street, NYC,

As far as I am aware, a book on Walker Evans’s photography entitled

of 1948. The texts in the two photographs are fundamentally

Signsi and a photo book by the contemporary photographer Lewis

different: one has racially prejudicial overtones, while the other

Koch entitled Touchless Automatic Wonder ii are the only examples

shouts about fast food. Yet each invited me to read the image and

of significant projects focused on signage in the oeuvre of an

its text as one meaningful and experimental sentence.

American photographer. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge,

I was in the storage area for works on paper at the Mead Art

found text in photography has not previously been the focus of any

Museum, the staff of which I had recently joined as an Andrew W.

project encompassing several decades and multiple artists. This

Mellon Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Fellow. Over the course of

catalogue seeks to broach the subject and lay the foundation for

a month early in my fellowship, I diligently looked at nearly every

future research.

photograph in the Mead’s collection – more than 1,600 – searching

All of the photographs in this exhibition are from the Mead’s

for a viable topic for this exhibition, the capstone of my fellowship.

permanent collection, which presented me with the challenge of

When I discovered those photographs by Sekaer and Frank, I was

selecting from objects given by donors of various tastes and

intrigued that each photograph’s featured text was not appended

purchased by curators with various interests and uniting them into

by the artist but had already existed within the environment –

a thematically coherent exhibition. This turned out not to be terribly

it was found text. I had found my subject.

difficult – once I found the first two photographs, dozens like them

This catalogue, and the related exhibition, includes thirty-two

seemed to come out of the woodwork. Unfortunately, certain gaps

twentieth-century photographs ranging in date from 1917 to 1988,

also became apparent. For instance, the Mead has none of Evans’s

created by one French photographer and seventeen American

celebrated sign photographs. The time range was in part determined

photographers. All feature found text in the form of signage, marquees, posters, product packaging, and so on. A majority of the highlighted text is of a commercial nature, labeling or advertising a product, entertainment, or establishment. While the subjects of art-in-advertising, advertising-in-art, and photography-in-advertising

8 | PHOTOdocument

i Evans, Walker Evans: Signs, essay by Andrei Codrescu (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1998). ii Lewis Koch, Touchless Automatic Wonder: Found Text from the Real World (Madison, WI: Borderland Books, 2009).

by what was in the collection. James Van Der Zee is the only African American artist in the exhibition; Mary Ellen Mark and Berenice Abbott are the only two women. In part, this reflects the paucity of recognition for minority photographers in the historiography, but it also simply reflects the strengths and gaps in the Mead’s photography collection. Nevertheless, taken together, the photographs considered on the following pages offer sufficient range to constitute a first, compellingly organized, study of the subject. The words included in these photographs were not captured purely by chance but were included by each photographer in order to enrich the image in terms of documentary, interpretive, and/or aesthetic function. Evans, a pioneering documentarystyle photographer cited as a significant influence on a number of artists in this exhibition, viewed signs as vernacular expression – indicative of a particular time, place, or people – as did several other early-twentieth-century artists. My approach to this essay was profoundly informed by this idea. What do these words reveal to us? Of what time, place, and people do they tell us? Maggie Dethloff Andrew W. Mellon Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Fellow December 2011

Introduction

O E L M E Y E R O W I T Z, explaining the inspiration for his early

in images, and various scholars have defined the basic meaning-

street photography, remarked, “America was this crazy place that

making units of images differently (as, for instance, individual

needed to be described and I had a social responsibility to tell it 1

lines or complete figures), to varying degrees of satisfaction among

as it is – the Great American Novel in photographs.” The notion of

their peers. The art historian James Elkins offers a more nuanced

a Great American Novel told in photographs is intriguing. For early

approach: he accepts that pictures are both semiotic and non-

photographers, the new medium offered a distinct means of assem-

semiotic – claiming, in essence, that the linguistic model is both

bling narrative, revolutionary for its potential for “new methods of

useful and useless at parsing a picture.3

representation, neither linguistic nor pictorial but hovering in a kind

The study of language may still illuminate how the intellectual

of utopian space between, where the informational utility of writing

process of reading a picture is intimately connected to language

meets the immediacy of sight.”2 The word photography is derived

(and vice versa). Cognitive linguistics asserts that language is not

from the ancient Greek for “light writing,” encapsulating early practi-

autonomous in the brain but is necessarily connected to the rest

tioners’ impression that the medium approximated writing and could

of human cognition. Neurolinguists have developed a number of

serve similar purposes. The notion of American twentieth-century

models for how the human brain stores and accesses an individual’s

photography as a visual rendition of the Great American Novel, and

lexicon (mental dictionary). In a Spreading Activation model, for

of photography itself as a form of writing, offers an interesting lens

instance, when a word is “activated” (heard, read, or thought),

through which to consider the photographs included in this exhibi-

it starts a chain reaction, activating others connected to it in a

tion, all of which incorporate actual text.

relational network, which in turn activates more connections.

Does the presence of actual text change the way we “read” these

According to this model, any kind of word can be linked to any other

photographs? The rich field of semiotics (the study of the ways in

by any type of association. If language is not autonomous in our

which signs and symbols communicate meaning, most often in

brains, then it stands to reason that this linguistic web would have

reference to language) offers clues. A number of theoreticians have

a rich discourse with our cache of mental pictures. In fact, research

attempted to adapt a linguistic semantic model to elucidate how

in cognitive neuroscience has found that the areas in the brain

a photograph incorporates signs and holds meaning. Employing a

engaged with language describing the visual world are adjacent to

semantic model requires meaning-making units. The fundamental

or overlapping the areas in the brain activated by the equivalent

meaning-making units of language (morphemes – words or parts of

perception. For example, thinking about the word brown and seeing

words that convey meaning) do not necessarily have clear analogs

the color brown activate related areas in the brain. 4

10 | PHOTOdocument

The photographs considered in this exhibition, with their com-

saw in signs “the rudiments of a uniquely American language,

binations of imagery and text, may be viewed as a manifestation of

which he could organize to convey his own sense of American

the defining characteristic of photography as being fully neither one

life.” 5 Through “repetition, bold display, and ingenuity,” American

nor the other. If we consider the historian Michael North’s assertion,

advertisements between World War I and World War II “contributed

quoted above, that photography occupies a utopian space between

to the shaping of a ‘community of discourse,’ an integrative common

the linguistic and pictorial, we might deem photography’s ambigu-

language shared by an otherwise diverse audience.” 6 This American

ous semantic property advantageous. The following photographs

discourse appears to embrace a rich, simultaneously visual and

of found text may bear this out by demonstrating an even richer and

linguistic vernacular language.

more complex meaning-making ability, a possibility supported by the

The writer Thomas Hine has characterized the creations of

theories discussed above concerning the cooperation between the

advertising artists at work around 1900, such as Norman Rockwell,

visual and the verbal in cognition.

as capturing “the spirit of America.” 7 Professor Roland Marchand

Although the scope of the present exhibition precludes the

notes, however, that advertisements did not generally reflect the

mapping of a new semiotic theory specifically for the reading of

social reality of the times, which would have been ineffectual in

twentieth-century American photographs that incorporate found text

selling products; rather, they represented an ideal projection – the

from advertising, I refer, throughout this text, to two art historical

American Dream. In the years that followed, particularly in the 1920s,

concepts that embody some of the linguistic topics outlined above:

’30s, and ’40s, advertising trended toward Modernism, a strategy

juxtaposition/collage and found objects. Collage, as I consider later,

that further distanced its representations from the lived reality of

straddles art and language, exemplifying the conjoining of meaning-

most Americans, while assuring that public that the American Dream

ful units into a meaningful whole. The Surrealists believed that found

was an essentially modern dream.8

objects could reveal one’s unconscious, a concept that relies on a

Whereas advertising may express an ideal, photography is

network-like lexicological model, similar to that described above, to

more frequently considered a “true” record of history. Berenice

stimulate free association.

Abbott, an influential early-twentieth-century photographer and

One further key to the interpretation of these photographs of

instructor, regarded photography as the only medium in which a

found text may hinge on the fact that the majority of the text is

true record of the modern city could be made.9 Poised between the

commercial in nature. Walker Evans, viewing signs as vernacular, a

truth of photography and the dream of advertising, this exhibition’s

concept most often used in reference to architecture or language,

photographs of found commercial texts offer an opportunity to

explore the tension between social reality and the American Dream

photography and engaged with a mood of alienation common in the

in twentieth-century America.

postwar era. I cite film noir and Surrealism as influences and cohorts.

This catalogue, like its sibling exhibition, is arranged roughly

A section focused on a photograph by Weegee, in which I

chronologically and also thematically. The text that follows is

compare it with a work by Andy Warhol, precedes a section high-

divided into three main sections, addressing the sequential

lighting two photographs to stimulate discussion about Coca-Cola.

chronological periods of the 1920s and 1930s, the 1940s and 1950s,

The last major section, addressing the 1960s and 1970s, features

and the 1960s and 1970s. Within each section, the photographs are

photographs demonstrating the requisition of sociopolitical and

arranged thematically. Occasionally, a photograph is placed out of

economic agency and the adoption of a Zen-like photographic

chronological order where it is most thematically appropriate. Other

aesthetic in response to the tumultuous social and political

photographs are highlighted for in-depth discussion independent of

atmosphere of the era. One photograph from the 1980s concludes

the essay’s narrative.

the text, introducing the topic of appropriation art, and leaves an

The text begins with a focused discussion of two photographs in which plays on words demonstrate the creative potential of language and of the language/image combination. In the first major section, covering the 1920s and 1930s, I

exploration of the digital age for another time. James Elkins has written, “Vision is inexhaustible once it reveals itself as more than a machinery for the efficient processing of light.”10 The same can be said of photography; that is to say, the significance

introduce Eugène Atget as a forefather of American documentary-

of vision and of photography goes beyond the mechanics of the

style photography. The Cubists and Dadaists appear in a discussion

apparatus. For Elkins, looking is not passive but always enmeshed

of the twentieth-century trend of redefining the concept of art, and

with searching and desiring.11 This is arguably the underlying

Stuart Davis appears in relation to the establishment of a wholly

principle that guides photographers to their subject and viewers

American art. I consider photographs of architecture and city

to find meaning in the photograph. What the photographers sought

inhabitants in the context of the urban environment and the Great

and what we seek as viewers may not necessarily be the same thing,

Depression.

but both are equally valid and fundamentally motivated by the

A consideration of political campaign slogans leads into the

same desire – the desire to find something profound, familiar

second major section, which focuses on the 1940s and 1950s. In

yet revelatory: something that illuminates our human condition.

this section, I discuss photographs of the cinema and restaurants

We may find it in the following images – an approximation of the

in relation to a changing photographic style influenced by war

Great American Novel, in photographs. r

12 | PHOTOdocument

Tw e n t i e t h - C e n t u r y A m e r i c a n P h o t o g r a p h y a n d F o u n d Te x t

14 | PHOTOdocument

Homophones for Wit

A M E S V A N D E R Z E E ’ S Funeral, WWI Veterans,

inherent in a soldier’s job and acts as a memento mori,

taken circa 1920, comprises two images printed one

reminding viewers that everyone is, in fact, at varying

on top of the other. Both show African American

paces, dying.

soldiers, perhaps members of the 369th Infantry, an

Aaron Siskind’s Peace Meals, of 1937, likewise employs

African American battalion that played a significant

a homophone. This photograph has a lighter mood than

role in the United States’ efforts in Europe during World

Funeral – in it, a smiling man, perhaps the chef, holds aloft

War I, nicknamed the “Harlem Hellfighters” for their

what appears to be a potpie in a celebratory manner –

tenacity. These two images serve an explicit documentary

but an equally weighty implication. Siskind cleverly derives

function, memorializing a band of highly decorated soldiers

a title from the sign beneath the window, turning “Peace

and the end of a horrific war. They also highlight the

Home Cooked Meals” into Peace Meals. The homophone

inherent qualities of language and juxtaposition and how

piecemeal(s) describes something fragmented, in pieces,

their creative capacities enrich – even dictate – the way

or done little by little. In the context of the Great

text and image interact.

Depression, piecemeal could refer to a fragmented society,

On the right side of each photograph, the soldiers stand in front of a funeral home. On the left side, they stand in front of a shop advertising dyeing. The three-way

the economy in pieces, and/or the process of changing either or both of these conditions, little by little. For contemporary viewers, the sign’s use of “Peace,”

juxtaposition of soldiers, funeral director, and dyeing

apparently the name of the eatery, calls to mind the

suggests we supplant dyeing with its homophone for the

violence that would soon erupt with Japan’s invasion of

expiration of life: dying. Homophones (words that sound

China in 1939 and Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1940.

like other words with different meanings) – like their

In this way, “Peace Meals” works as both a hopeful epithet

linguistic relations homonyms, homographs, and metaphor

and an omen of impending war. r

– are one element of language that allows for wordplay, a form of verbal wit. Here wit engages irony – the dyeing/ dying play on words is not humorous but melancholy and profound, bringing to mind the heightened risk of death

16 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee

ÂŠ Aaron Siskind Foundation, courtesy Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

18 | PHOTOdocument

1920s–1930s: Face(s) of the City

H I S E X H I B I T I O N T A K E S I T S T I T L E from the use of the

Lewis Hine, whose photographs of laborers did not fit comfortably

term photo document by the New York Photo League, a coop-

into existing stylistic groupings. The next year, an exhibition of the

erative of socially and politically concerned photographers that

work of Walker Evans entitled American Photographs, also held at

organized a number of thematic projects, such as the appropriately

MoMA, reinforced the term as an accepted category.14

named Harlem Document (considered below). The Photo League’s

In Atget’s Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, of 1925, an

use of the word document in the 1930s situated the League within a

advertisement for a peinture-decorator (painter-decorator) is painted

recently fabricated lineage.

on the side of a building adjacent to an open-air grocery. Painter-

In order to establish precedent for their style, American

decorators were likely among the artisans to whom Atget sold his

documentary-style photographers of the 1930s adopted the

photographs. Indeed, Atget certainly knew one peinture-decorator:

pioneering French photographer Eugène Atget as a forefather.

Cavaillé-Coll, whose home the photographer documented as part

Atget had extensively photographed the city of Paris, capturing

of a series of interiors that illustrated the living arrangements

street scenes, parks, and interiors to an unprecedented degree.

associated with different occupations, including an actress’s home,

In his essay “Nothing to Photograph Here,” Peter Sekaer, a Danish-

Atget’s own residence, and others’.15 Atget photographed the Rue

born photographer working in the 1930s for the New Deal’s Rural

de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève frequently. Beyond his fondness

Electrification Administration and United States Housing Authority,

for the street and the potential utility of the scene for a client,

among other organizations, identifies Atget as the inspiration for

this photograph also subtly alludes to Atget’s own vocation as

the term documentary: a sign on Atget’s door announced

photographer-entrepreneur and may have provided a clever self-

Documents pour Artistes (Documents for Artists).

reference for an appropriate client.

Atget made his living providing photographs to painters,

By adopting Atget as a forefather, United States documentary-

cartoonists, theater designers, decorators, and others for use as

style photographers also placed their photography featuring found

visual source material, and to libraries and museums as historical

text within a larger trend in modern art in which the incorporation of

documents. In 1937, the photo historian Beaumont Newhall intro-

words served to evoke the experience of modern, industrial, urban

duced the category “documentary photography” into the official

life. Interestingly, Atget may have helped to inspire other artists

historiography when, in the groundbreaking Museum of Modern Art

whose work provides an important art historical context for that

exhibition The History of Photography, he applied it to the work of

of the documentary-style photographers.

Eugène Atget | Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève | 1925 | AC 2002.119 19

20 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee

Atget, who had been taking photographs of signs since the

In this way, “words participate[d] in the interrogation of the nature

1890s, sold his work during the 1920s to the Cubist painters Pablo 16

of pictorial representation and contribute[d] to the wholesale

Picasso and Georges Braque, who had (independently, before learn-

revision of the concept of art.” 19 The Cubists played a seminal role

ing of Atget’s similar work) begun to incorporate text into their art in

in opening the floodgates to definitions of what constitutes a work

the 1910s. The Cubist style of painting broke its subject into multiple

of art – a question that captivated twentieth-century artists and still

geometric faces and displayed them on a single plane. Picasso’s

shapes our discipline and provokes controversy today.

and Braque’s experiments with collage played a crucial role in the

Five years after Picasso painted Landscape with Posters, the

evolution of their revolutionary formal breakthrough, and it was

Dadaist Marcel Duchamp argued that a urinal, signed with the

in collages and collage paintings that they first introduced text.i

pseudonym R. Mutt, which he had submitted to the exhibition of

In the aptly titled Paysage aux Affiches (Landscape with Posters),

the Society of Independent Artists in New York in 1917, was art.

from 1912, Picasso announces his embrace of the proliferating

Fountain,iii as it came to be known, is the most notorious example of

production of banal, everyday objects and their advertisements

Duchamp’s found sculptures, which he called “readymades,” and is

by including a partially visible advertisement for KUB, a bouillon

celebrated as the ultimate example of the elevation of the banal to

product, the name of which cleverly alludes to Picasso’s Cubist style.

the ranks of high culture. In Picasso’s collages and paintings, and in

As Professor David Lomas notes, collage “as a formal principle crosses over the verbal and visual and has equivalents in each.”

the photographs considered here, found text is itself elevated into

The construction of a collage is not unlike the construction of a sentence or the deliberate placing of visual components into an artistic composition. Together, word and image can complement and reinforce one another. At other times, however, the combination may be orchestrated to produce dissonance “for the purpose of challenging or disrupting ideological representations of reality, as well as constructions of meaning and intelligibility.” 18 In playing with intelligibility and representations of reality, Cubism “dismantled an idea of what a painting is that had prevailed since the Renaissance.”

i Lomas notes that, tellingly, the Cubist painters, while growing up during education reforms under the French Third Republic (1870–1940), received drawing instruction that emphasized geometric and technical drawing, intended to provide children with a “modern visual language, a language of industry.” David Lomas, “‘New in Art, they are already soaked in humanity’: Word and Image, 1900–1945” in Art, Word, and Image (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), 117. ii Pablo Picasso, Paysage aux Affiches (Landscape with Posters), 1912 (The National Museum of Art, Osaka). See Rosalind E. Krauss, The Picasso Papers (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), 173. iii Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1950, replica of 1917 original (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1998-74-1), accessed December 24, 2011, http://www.philamuseum.org /collections/permanent/92488.html?mulR=30791|98.

James Van Der Zee | First Photography Studio (135th Street) | 1917 | AC 1983.127 21

22 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Berenice Abbott/Commerce Graphics

the realm of fine art, a linguistic version of Duchamp’s readymades. Michael North explains how photography played a significant role in enabling these conversions: “Any object can be a work of art if 20

new era of ‘conspicuous consumption’ ” 25 (i.e., modernity itself ). As the writer Maurice Talmeyr proclaimed in his 1896 article “The Age of the Poster:” “Nothing is really of a more violent moderni-

the camera eye chooses to make it one.” Thus, photography can

ty, nothing dates so insolently from today [as] the illustrated poster,

turn text into a readymade, and furthermore, “art can become mere

with its combative colour, its mad drawing and fantastic character,

appropriation because every inch of reality had been rendered

announcing everywhere in thousands of papers that other thousands

aesthetic in principle by the possibility of photographic appro-

of papers will have covered over tomorrow, an oil, a bouillon, a fuel,

priation.” North characterizes Duchamp’s readymades as “achieved

a polish, or a new chocolate.” 26 If Alexis de Tocqueville, a French

by a ‘snapshot effect,’ which suggests that, in creating this entirely

political thinker and historian, assessed America correctly as “the

new form, Duchamp has simply moved the logic of the photograph

most freedom-loving, most materialistic, and the most religious he

one step: instead of capturing the object on film, the artist acts as

had ever encountered,” 27 then the advertising director and writer

his own camera and captures the object itself.”

In addition to Atget’s and the Cubists’ work, many early American documentary-style photographers would have been aware iv

Barry Hoffman’s emphasis on the relationship between consumption and freedom seems less eccentric: for Americans, Hoffman argues, freedom to pursue happiness can also be construed as freedom to

of the work of Stuart Davis. The painter, like many of the photo-

consume.28 According to this reading, it is unsurprising that Davis and

graphers, was employed in one of President Roosevelt’s New Deal

other artists would employ commercial text in particular in construct-

projects. Along with a number of other American artists and poets,

ing a uniquely American art.

Davis invested himself during the 1920s in developing a uniquely

James Van Der Zee’s photograph of his second wife, Gaynella

American art. Davis had worked in the Cubist style in France and he

Van Der Zee, First Photography Studio (135th Street), taken in 1917,

sought to focus his art into the image of the new modern city. In a

provides an interesting comparison to Atget’s Rue de la Montagne-

decade notable for the export to Europe of “American Culture,” 23

Sainte-Geneviève. While Atget, who considered himself an entre-

Davis included commercial products and logos in his art as “an

preneur rather than an artist, captures the sign of a potential client-

expression of his American identity.” They also served as “a token of his modernity,” 24 since posters advertising products and entertainment had come, beginning in the 1890s, to “symbolize a

iv See Stuart Davis, Lucky Strike, 1921 (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 132.1951), accessed December 24, 2011, http://www.moma.org/collection /browse_results.php?object_id=78934.

Berenice Abbott | Row of Commercial Buildings | 1930s | AC 1998.199 23

24 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Aaron Siskind Foundation, courtesy Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

artist, Van Der Zee celebrates himself as entrepreneur and artist.

industrial age.30 A fundamentally mechanical and chemical process

The photograph features the front of his first studio, located on 135th

with the amazing capacity to make pictures using light, photography

Street in New York, its windows filled with announcements using

was capable of two primary functions: utilitarian – documenting

its name, Guarantee Photo Studio, and examples of the imaginative

property or botanical specimens, for instance – and aesthetic.

and skillful portraits on which Van Der Zee built his success, created

Although it was a captivating visual medium, photography’s

with the assistance of props, costumes, and manipulative darkroom

mechanical nature and, following the introduction of the negative-

techniques such as printing double negatives.

positive process, its ability to produce multiple originals, set it

Although Atget regarded his photography as an artist’s tool,

apart from the handmade, unique masterpieces of painting and

rather than art in and of itself, the documentary-style photographers

sculpture. From its advent, photography was positioned to exist in a

of the 1930s who claimed him as a predecessor elevated his work

tenuous relationship to the traditional fine arts, as its practitioners

to the status of art. Berenice Abbott, who met Atget while working

struggled to define the specific nature of their medium and be

as a portraitist in Paris, valued his work precisely for its “non-arty,”

recognized as artists of the same creative stature as those of

objective character. When Abbott returned to the United States

traditional media. Some nineteenth-century photographers sought

in 1929, she brought with her a large portion of Atget’s negatives

to elevate the status of their art by adopting the appurtenances

and prints, which she had acquired upon his death in 1927. Through

of paintings and fine art prints, such as decorative frames.31 By

exhibitions and publications, Abbott and the future gallery owner

about 1890, photographers had repositioned the signifiers of art

Julien Levy introduced Atget’s work to photographers in the

within the frame: the photographic style known as Pictorialism,

United States. In 1936, Sekaer invited First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt

championed by Alfred Stieglitz and Clarence White, emulated

to compose the catalogue introduction for an exhibition of

a painterly aesthetic and emphasized creative manipulation of

Resettlement Administration photographs. In his letter, he echoes

material (i.e., the photographer’s artistic choices). In this way,

Abbott’s view about the artistic value of a “non-arty” style, saying,

Pictorialism understated photography’s utilitarian and mechanical

“If photography is to prove its worth as an art form it will probably

nature. By the 1920s, however, Pictorialism was deemed insufficient

be in this direction,” that is, documentary. From the announcement of its invention in 1839, photography was understood to be a potent symbol of the technological and

to represent the spirit of modern, industrial, urban life,32 and many photographers adopted a crisply focused style, called “straight photography,” that embraced qualities that the Pictorialists had

Aaron Siskind | Facade, Unoccupied Building | 1937 | AC 1984.74.2 25

26 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Berenice Abbott/Commerce Graphics

shrugged off – primarily, the medium’s inherent realism. With the

true pictorial record of the lives of Americans.” The essay concludes,

new style, photographers attempted to show, in the words of Sekaer

“Our efforts to unite the representive [sic] photographers of today

to Roosevelt, the “vital relation to contemporary life” that “has

must be met with success. Photography is at a crucial stage in its

always been an essential factor of any great art expression.”

Artists of the 1920s and ’30s often described photography as having recently been rediscovered, encouraged in part by the utility 34

of photography to the social and political issues of the day. The

development. Will the dampening influence of those who would distort it defeat the true function of photography? Or will we through organization give the necessary impetus to the honest representatives of this craft?” 36

New York Photo League expressed just such an opinion in “For a League of American Photographers” in the August 1938 issue of their newsletter, Photo Notes: “Photography has tremendous social

The Changing Face of the City

value. Upon the photographer rests the responsibility and duty of

W H E N S H E A R R I V E D B A C K in the United States, Berenice

recording a true image of the world as it is today. Moreover, he must

Abbott abandoned portraiture and the avant-garde circles in which

not only show us how we live, but indicate the logical development of

she had been invested in France and, likely with Eugène Atget’s

our lives.” The unidentified author goes on to describe the League’s

documentation of Paris in mind, embarked on an ambitious project

dedication to the documentary style and elucidates what it believed

to document the rapidly changing New York. Funded through the

was at stake – an honest representation of American life and the

New Deal Federal Art Project beginning in 1935, Abbott’s project

very fate of photography itself: “The Photo League’s task is to put the

was published as a book entitled Changing New York in 1939.

camera back into the hands of honest photographers, who will use

Abbott’s Row of Commercial Buildings, although not included in

it to photograph America.”

The League took as its model the photographers working for

that volume, was undoubtedly one of the 305 photographs taken over the course of the project. Most of Abbott’s Changing New York

departments established under Roosevelt’s New Deal, such as

photographs emphasize architectural manifestations of change while

Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans: “Our primary aim will be to

reducing human presence to a trace. Row of Commercial Buildings

further the type of photography exemplified by the T.V.A. [Tennessee

exemplifies this: the three men outside Duffy’s Pharmacy, although

Valley Authority] and the Resettlement Administration. From these

they are near the center of the composition, are almost small enough

two projects have come not only homes and electricity but the first

to be overlooked. Rather than presenting a prominent human

Berenice Abbott | Blossom Restaurant, 103 Bowery | 1935 | AC 1998.195 27

28 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Morris Engel Archives

presence, Abbott records traces of life in the environment – in the

the former human occupants of this now-derelict building. Siskind

signs in the windows along the street.

emphasizes the geometric similarities between the rectangular

Just as the skyline of the city was changing as a result of a second

boarded-up windows and the rectangular broadsides. The way the

building boom of skyscrapers, even taller than before, the facades

advertisements are adhered, following the contours of the wall and

of buildings appeared different as advertising material burgeoned.37

window frames, induces the feeling that the advertisements are a

Here, Abbott describes commercial text as an integral part of the

natural accoutrement of the building, as if the building is growing

developing urban environment. The windows of Duffy’s Pharmacy

posters like a fungus. Whether the relationship between signs and

sport multiple signs for Ashley Ice Cream and Coca-Cola.

the city was “symbiotic” or “parasitic” was hotly contested during

Probably unconsciously, in this photograph Abbott also docu-

the first two decades of the twentieth century. Groups such as the

ments the historical relationship between soda pop and pharmacies.

Municipal Art Society and the City Club of New York, concerned with

Coca-Cola was invented by the pharmacist John Smith Pemberton

maintaining or cultivating the “beauty and livability” of the city,

in 1886, during the “patent medicine” era, when scores of

argued that billboards and the electric signs of Times Square were

concoctions, often ineffective or even dangerous, were marketed

unsafe and unaesthetic. Their efforts led to the establishment of

as medicinal or therapeutic, before measures such as the Pure Food

(more or less effective) zoning laws.41

and Drug Act of 1906 were put in place to ensure the safety of such products and the integrity of their advertising.39 Although sold as a beverage rather than a medicine, Coca-Cola was, true to the times, first advertised as a remedy for headaches, indigestion, 40

and insomnia.

Aaron Siskind’s Facade, Unoccupied Building, taken in 1937,

Faces of the City I N C O N T R A S T T O Row of Commercial Buildings, Berenice Abbott’s Blossom Restaurant, 103 Bowery, of 1935, prominently features figures. While Abbott rarely included people purposefully

further illustrates the increase of advertising materials in the

in her photographs, when she did, she appears to have been

city at the time. Even more than Abbott’s Row of Commercial

conscientious about their position in the composition. To create this

Buildings, Siskind’s photograph invokes advertising as a sign

photograph, she set up her camera and waited for people to enter the

of human presence in its literal absence: uncanny in mood, this

frame, a tactic she frequently employed.42 The resulting photograph

photograph appears to imply that posters and broadsides replaced

captures a moment of people routinely and unconsciously interacting

Morris Engel | Harlem Merchant, NYC | 1937 | AC 2000.379 29

30 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Aaron Siskind Foundation, courtesy Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

with the textual environment. While these two businesses, Blossom

products seem to comment on his life. “Day’s Work” describes his

Restaurant and the barbershop of Jimmy the Barber, loudly boast

day-to-day existence, while “sweet” and “better” promise a quality

what they offer and for what reasonable prices – three large pork

of life that was likely clearly and painfully out of reach for this

chops at the restaurant or a ladies’ haircut for thirty cents – no

Depression-era merchant.

customers are to be seen at either establishment: evidence of the

Siskind’s Grocery Store was taken in 1940 for The Most Crowded

economic hard times. The art historian Bonnie Yochelson describes

Block in the World, a project that Siskind continued after leaving the

Jimmy the Barber and his assistant as hapless, fatigued, and

Photo League. The project encompassed the square block between

restless, encapsulating the mood of the Great Depression.

The figure in Morris Engel’s Harlem Merchant, NYC, of 1937, is

142nd and 143rd Streets and Lenox and Seventh Avenues, essentially extending the work of the Harlem Document.45 The abundance of

similarly hapless, fatigued, and perhaps even hopeless. Engel’s

canned and dried goods and bottled beverages in this grocery gives

photograph (along with Aaron Siskind’s Peace Meals, considered

the impression of plenty. Thomas Hine comments, “Historically,

above) was taken for the Harlem Document series, one of the

packages are what made self-service retailing possible, and in

better-known Photo League projects, organized by Siskind, the

turn such stores increased the number and variety of items people

leader of the “Feature Group.” The project documented the lives of

buy.” 46 The young man’s smile and the name of the store, “Our Own

Harlem residents in the hopes that the photographs could instigate

Community Grocery and Delicatessen,” imply pride and alert us to

positive change. The intimate scale and poignancy of Harlem

the importance of this grocery store for its community. Here, the

Merchant is characteristic of Engel’s work. In an announcement for

commercial text acts as the voice of a group, which seems to claim

an exhibition of Engel’s photography at the New School for Social

that the identity of the neighborhood is in part defined by its having

Research in 1939, the photographer Paul Strand wrote, “They are not

its own grocery and a degree of economic autonomy.

types, but people in whom the quality of the life they live is vivid –

Van Der Zee’s Milk Booth for Harlem Children, likely taken in 1930,

unforgettable.” 44 In Harlem Merchant, the figure, presumably the

documents the type of positive social action that the Photo League

proprietor of the shop, peers dolefully from a small window, his head

photographers sought to instigate. The photograph shows a milk

framed by the window casings and aligned with multiple large jars of

booth of the kind conceived in the mid-nineteenth century and first

peppermint, nut brittle, and other candies, as if he is himself another

successfully implemented in the early 1900s 47 to provide free or

dusty and disheveled item for sale. Placards advertising tobacco

nominally priced pasteurized milk to promote public health. The sign

Aaron Siskind | Grocery Store | 1940 | AC 1985.79.5 31

32 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee

on the booth identifies it as having been established by the Mayor’s Committee of Women on National Defense, which sponsored entertainment for soldiers and provided supplies to the needy during World War I. This is likely the booth opened to serve the children of Harlem, referred to in Hearst Metrotone News in 1930: “More free milk for N.Y. babies – Mrs. W.R. Hearst opens up new station to supply kids of Harlem with needed nourishment.” 48 (Millicent Hearst, the wife of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, acted as chair of the mayor’s committee and is best known for founding, in 1921, the Free Milk Fund for Babies, which provided milk to New York City families in need.) The twenty or more children in the photograph, predominantly African Americans, appear as if perhaps Van Der Zee deliberately gathered them together for the picture, placing at the front a boy lazily holding a jug, to illustrate the beneficiaries of the new milk booth. r

James Van Der Zee | Milk Booth for Harlem Children | ca. 1930 | AC 1983.126 33

“

Sorry . . . Adlai and Estes . . . Don’t Cry . . . Try Your Luck Next Time

34 | PHOTOdocument

”

Selling the Candidate

R A N K P A U L I N ’ S Eisenhower wins in USA,

memorable, and persuasive slogan. Its success is

New York captures the buzz surrounding the

evidenced by its reproduction in numerous languages,

announcement of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s re-election

braille, sign language, and Morse code (despite the fact

to the presidency and Richard Nixon’s re-election to the

that the rhyme and repetition may not have translated)

vice presidency in 1956. Illuminated signs suggest that the

and on buttons, nylon stockings, sunglasses, and myriad

scene is in front of a newsstand. With newspapers standing

other items. Despite the ubiquity of the phrase, the first-

as a nexus between authoritative and popular circulation of

person voice of “I like Ike” encourages the speaker (or

knowledge, the various texts in this photograph contrast

the wearer) to co-opt it as an individual statement and

official announcement with statements of personal support,

empowers him or her to feel like an engaged participant.

exploring the role of text in individuals’ participation in

Similarly, the personal tone of the other sign, reading

the campaign and celebration. As the writer Keith Melder

“Sorry ... Adlai and Estes ... Don’t cry ... ,” makes the sign

argues, “Our presidential campaigns ... get leaders elected,

that much more pointed in its mockery of Eisenhower and

yes, but, ultimately, they also tell us who we as a people

Nixon’s opponents Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver.

are, where we have been and where we are going.” This

Melder also characterizes election campaigns as

photograph thus also demonstrates the participation of

essentially “frenzied national entertainments – folk

text in what Melder identifies as a decisive moment

festivals.” 51 Aaron Siskind’s Facade, Unoccupied Building,

regarding the identity of the nation.

from 1937 (considered above), captures campaign and

Election campaigns have long relied heavily on

cinema broadsides layered on top of each other, similarly

persuasive memorabilia and catchy slogans. In this

suggesting, slyly, that entertainment and politics are

photograph, two men hold signs, one of which reads

essentially one and the same. By the time Eisenhower wins

“I like Ike and Dick.” “I like Ike,” used as a slogan in both

was taken, memorabilia and campaign items such as the

of Eisenhower’s presidential campaigns, has been called

“I like Ike” buttons were becoming defunct, thanks to the

the first and most successful “inescapable modern media

elaborately staged media events that reached greater

slogan” in American history.50 The rhyme and the repetition

audiences via radio and television.52 Because the

of the k sound make “I like Ike (and Dick)” a simple,

(minimally) informative and (highly) performative

ÂŠ Frank Paulin

36 | PHOTOdocument

spectacles reached people in their homes, they heightened the sense of politics as an entertainment and eroded its participatory nature to some degree. While reading this photograph as an example of public investment in an election, one must also notice that many of the people in the photograph are only passersby. These two sign-holders then appear like remnants from a dispersed rally. r

Frank Paulin | Eisenhower wins in USA, New York | 1956 | AC 2010.18 37

ÂŠ Frank Paulin

38 | PHOTOdocument

1940s–1950s: Dinner and a Movie

O R L D W A R I I H A D produced a strong national unity,

that results from the photographer’s attempts to merge the outside

established the United States as a leading international

world with his or her inner world. Cartier-Bresson’s statement marks

power, and stimulated economic growth, enabling the creation

a watershed in the history of photography: his validation of the new

of a large suburban middle class and an accompanying boom

subjective style validated, by extension, the idea that photography

of consumption. Yet the memory of the horrors of war, including

involves the artist’s creative expression to the same degree as does

the Nazi concentration camps and the atomic bomb, recorded by

painting or sculpture – or, to state the idea simply, that photography

photojournalists and published in Life and other popular picture

is a true art form.56

magazines, as well as the memory of the Great Depression,

While Berenice Abbott and members of the Photo League had

created dissonance in the minds of many Americans. In contrast

seized on Eugène Atget’s objectivity as an exemplar, Julien Levy

to the feelings of alienation and uncertainty this conflict may have

and the Surrealist photographer Man Ray considered Atget’s work

provoked, magazines and advertisements painted an idyllic picture

Proto-Surrealist for its dreamlike mood and quality of “surpassing

of exaggerated happiness and prosperity.

reality.”i 57 Surrealism, a literary and artistic movement originating

Informed by the often blurry, grainy, and crudely composed

in the 1910s whose practitioners included Salvador Dalí and André

appearance of war photography and reflecting, to varying degrees,

Breton, explored the unconscious through juxtaposition and

a pervasive sense of postwar anxiety, documentary-style (also

automatism (writing or drawing without conscious direction). For

called “street”) photographers turned to a snapshot-esque aesthetic

Surrealist artists such as Dalí, photography was itself an act of

with a daringly subjective mood, which the curator Lisa Hostetler

automatism.58 After the leading members of Surrealism immigrated

dubbed the “psychological gesture.” 54 Critics initially condemned

to the United States in the early 1940s, the style would become

this style for its informality and – as was the case with the influential

a “particularly vital aspect” of the postwar era’s “expressive

photographer Robert Frank’s photo book The Americans – for its

vocabulary.” 59 The informal, highly personal style of certain works

subjectivity, which uncovered an America anathema to the idealized

by some postwar photographers created juxtaposition-rich,

image propagated by the commercial media. This new style,

dreamlike scenes reminiscent of Surrealism.

however, would be validated by the French street photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson’s 1952 book The Decisive Moment. CartierBresson argues that the goal of photography is to express the world

i Man Ray, for whom Abbott worked as a studio assistant while in Paris, introduced Abbott and Levy to Atget’s work in the mid-1920s.

Frank Paulin | Times Square, New York City | 1956 | AC 2010.19 39

ÂŠ Mark Faurer

40 | PHOTOdocument

In Frank Paulin’s Times Square, New York City, of 1956, layers

This photograph focuses on empty airspace in which neon signs

of glowing signs give the photograph just such a collaged and

appear to hover beyond an invisible periphery. Despite the presence

dreamy appearance. As Paulin notes, Surrealism had a profound

of cars and crowds on the street, the scene recalls the expression

impact on his work: “My interest in photography developed during

“alone in a crowd.” The tension it establishes between emptiness

World War II, when I spent two years in the Signal Corps in Europe,

and fullness, aloneness and crowdedness, embodies the mood of

and wandered through the ruins of bombed cities. These images

alienation characteristic of much postwar photography.

exuded an amazing surrealistic quality despite the intense reality of the subject.” This “play between surrealism and what purports to be realism” remains an undercurrent in his work.60 Surrealist

Found at the Cinema

art, informed by the psychology of Sigmund Freud, exuded a

T H E S U R R E A L I S T S H A D a particular interest in found objects,

mood that was simultaneously profane, usually sexually charged,

believing that “a thing picked up anywhere, divorced from its

and intellectually lofty. In a recent review, the critic Leah Ollman

context or use, might shock the beholder with its powerful blend

describes Paulin’s work in terms evocative of this contradiction:

of the commonplace and the unfamiliar, recalling one’s innermost

“Paulin captures the sacred rubbing up against the profane, the

desires to oneself, granting access to one’s own unconscious.”63 Old

ordinary yearning toward the ideal.”61

photographs were especially appreciated, viewed as uncovering the

In Times Square the petty nature of the products advertised in the

aspirations of an epoch. In a Surrealistic reading, the texts included

signs is masked by the flashiness of the lights. Sophisticated cultural

in the following photographs – linguistic found objects, so to speak

offerings, such as ballroom dancing and a production of My Fair Lady,

– work to uncover the psyches of the photographers and their time.

rub shoulders with the less desirable Johnnie Walker, Budweiser,

Like Frank Paulin’s Times Square, Louis Faurer’s Times Square,

and an establishment where you can “Dance with Beautiful Girls.”

USA, 1950 has a dreamlike mood. Bold text hovers in the air while

For Paulin’s contemporary Louis Faurer, the unconscious fuels the

dozens of small lights make shadows out of men. As alien as

activity of Times Square, making it an ideal subject for a Surrealistic

Faurer has made the scene look, it is, in fact, quite familiar. The

exploration: “With its combination of towering skyscrapers, neon

text announces a movie; bulbs line the underside of a marquee,

advertising, and heterogeneous crowds of pedestrians, Times

silhouetting people on the sidewalk below. The marquee advertises

Square embodied a kind of modern primitivism.”

Stanley Kramer’s Home of the Brave, a film about an African

Louis Faurer | Times Square, USA, 1950 | 1950 | AC 1986.111 41

ÂŠ Mark Faurer

42 | PHOTOdocument

ÂŠ Mark Faurer

ÂŠ Frank Paulin

44 | PHOTOdocument

ÂŠ Joel Meyerowitz

ÂŠ Robert Frank

46 | PHOTOdocument

American World War II veteran whose acknowledgment of prejudice

the city produces nemeses that attempt to lure the protagonist into

allows him to overcome a psychologically correlated physical

danger, projections of his internal crises of self-perception and

paralysis. The movie title not only identifies a story involving one

alienation. The loudly commercial character of the modern city, with

man plumbing his unconscious but is also derived from “The Star-

its glowing marquees, must have contributed to the city’s animation

Spangled Banner.” In this photograph, this found patriotic text

as an alienating force. The “decadence” of the era both masked

seems to comment on the essence of a nation emerging victorious

and manically manifested the psychological upheaval that many

from war. In the context of the psychological dissonance of the

Americans felt after the war.

postwar period, this phrase can be read with skepticism. Are the

Even more than Times Square, Faurer’s Globe Theatre, NY, NY,

horrific experiences of soldiers in war adequately described as

from 1950, and NY, NY, ca. 1948 communicate a sense of isolation

“brave”? Can a country be characterized as brave abroad when it

and anxiety typical of film noir. The found texts in both photographs,

is less than equitable at home?

when read as Surrealist found objects, function as omens of violence

After high school, Faurer studied commercial lettering and

and underscore the contemporary cinematic portrayal of the city as

worked creating signs and posters. As a result, text appealed to him 64

and became a repeated motif in a number of his photographs, such as those considered here. The photographs by Faurer included in

dangerous – a conception linked in part to a wave of middle-class migration to the new suburbs. Faurer’s photographs position the viewer as part of the crowd

this exhibition are furthermore characteristic of his work between

or in the room. This intimate viewpoint reflects the more personal

1947 and 1951, when he was interested in the cinema, particularly

inflection of street photography of the period and offers a visual

in the sorts of “psychological explorations” in Home of the Brave

counterpart to the voice-over characteristic of film noir, which

and characteristic of film noir. Film noir, which reached an apogee in

likewise invites the viewer to share in inside knowledge.67 By

the decade around 1950, manifested postwar anxiety using means

adopting this strategy of forced intimacy from film noir, Faurer’s

analogous to the “psychological gesture” of postwar photography.66

photographs seem to recruit the viewer to complicity in an impending

Both the still and the moving pictures employed shadows, high tonal

crime. In Globe Theatre, a movie listing offers various ominous

contrast, and urban environments. Photographers found that the

options for the man’s identity – a Public Enemy? Scarface? A Killer?

hectic urban social experience brought to the fore timely questions

The word “Globe” embroidered on his cap, however, reveals him to

of community and personal identity. In film noir, out of the shadows,

be only a theater employee.

Robert Frank | White Tower, 14th Street, NYC | 1948 | AC 1997.28 47

ÂŠ Frank Paulin

48 | PHOTOdocument

In NY, NY, ca. 1948, a movie advertisement portends an “Act of

In contrast to the darkly serious film noir evoked in Faurer’s

Violence,” perhaps to be perpetrated by the young man at center,

photographs, Paulin’s work is, in the words of the historian and

holding one hand before him in a loose, palm-up fist. He may only

photographer Max Kozloff, more good-humored.69 Despite the

be holding something, but an undercurrent of unease in the photo-

similarities between the photographs, this one is exaggerated to

graph supports the possibility that his gesture may be menacing.

the point of ridiculousness. Horror films of the 1950s, inherently

A crisscrossing network of gazes links the several men in the room,

over-the-top productions with low-tech effects that are often

implying that something is about to happen and the danger could

unintentionally funny, stand apart from the serious, hypermasculine

come from any one of them.

film noir and gangster movies of the 1930s and ’40s. By throwing

As is the case in Faurer’s Globe Theatre, in Paulin’s I WAS A

the face of this young man into deep shadow, Paulin exaggerates

TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, Times Square, New York City, taken in 1957,

its explicit seriousness and foreboding, implicitly imbuing the

the titles of the movie and accompanying featurette, I Was a Teenage

photograph with humor. If Faurer’s pictures imply that anyone can

Frankenstein and The Wildest, together with the partial tagline

be a monster, Paulin’s photograph suggests that monsters aren’t

“Unearthly Thing,” offer potential descriptors for a young man. In

real, they’re just for fun.

the former movie, Dr. Frankenstein creates a homicidal teenage

Joel Meyerowitz’s New Years Eve, NYC (Kiss me, stupid), of

monstrosity out of the body parts of other teenagers. A New York

1965, depicts a scene more like one found in Grease than in any

Times reviewer opined that, while the film lacked any innovation,

of the film noir or horror movies mentioned above, and indeed,

it was timely in light of the “deepening crisis brought on by teen-

the movie advertised on the marquee and on the poster to the right

age violence.” The reviewer expressed concern that such films –

is a romantic comedy. In Kiss Me, Stupid, a piano teacher hires a

“indulgence[s] of the cult of ‘teenism’” – would perpetuate juvenile

woman to play the part of his wife when a lascivious performer

delinquency and rightfully turn the stomach of an adult viewer.

comes to visit. Because we know that this photograph was taken

If the drive-in movie scene in the musical Grease, when Danny cops a

on New Year’s Eve, however, the words appear to have been written

feel during the horror film The Blob, is any indicator, then horror films

there deliberately for the holiday. The quotation marks around the

may indeed live in the popular imagination as venues where a certain

phrase imply a speaker and hint at the romantic notion this couple

kind of teenage delinquency can occur, although (I would argue) of a

might have had – that the words were meant for them, inspiring

much more benign sort.

them to kiss.

Frank Paulin | Fair-way, New Orleans, Louisiana | 1952 | AC 2010.16 49

50 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ The Estate of John Szarkowski / Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Restaurants

impression that the only thing that mattered in the industry was

R O B E R T F R A N K ’ S White Tower, 14th Street, NYC, taken in 1948,

was translated as a cynical tone in many of his photographs of the

engages with the issues of postwar identity common to Faurer’s

late 1940s and 1950s. In this photograph, a seventh woman, on the

photographs and film noir via an image of six women at the window

right, stares back at the photographer with an uninflected gaze,

bar of a hamburger joint. At first glance, the women appear to be

destroying the advertising-like illusion of the image and flattening

one woman, with coiffed dark hair and an attractive winter coat,

the levity of the scene. The bold exclamation “HAMBURGERS”

copied multiple times. The women seem to enact the loss of personal

itself divests the scene of some of the power it could have as an

identity feared by those struck by the apparent homogeneity of the

advertisement. The juxtaposition of lovely women with a meal as

postwar population.

making more money.72 Frank’s disappointment in American values

White Tower also mimics the visual language of advertising that Frank would have known from his recent work, shortly after arriving in the United States from Switzerland in 1947, at Harper’s Bazaar. While

average as hamburgers begins to make the women seem frivolous and suggests dismay at the crude nature of the food thought to epitomize the American way of life.ii Like Frank’s view of look-alike women, Paulin’s Fair-way, New

employed at that magazine, Frank would have become familiar with

Orleans, Louisiana, of 1952, also employs reiteration. The name of

the ways in which advertisements target a potential buyer’s self-image

the restaurant and certain brand names, such as Coca-Cola and Jax

by implying that purchasing the featured products demonstrates

Beer, are repeated on the same type of sign along the two adjacent

economic power, cultural potency, social status, or taste.71 If this were

sides of the building, making the view pseudo-symmetrical. Our

an advertisement for White Tower, we would perceive the women to

impression, enhanced by the curved balcony, is that the scene is

be representatives of economic means and sophisticated taste. The

bowed, as if it is the reflection in a distorting mirror at the junction

ad would, in turn, suggest that these women’s good taste extends

of paths in a fun house. Breaking the stillness and shattering, or

to, or even is defined by, their preference for delicious White Tower

defying, the carnivalesque mood of this scene, a single shirtless

hamburgers. Perhaps most important, the women’s easy gaiety would

boy in jeans and sneakers runs around the corner.

be invoked to convince a potential customer that a White Tower hamburger could provide genuine joy as well as sustenance. At Harper’s Bazaar, Frank became disillusioned by his strong

ii See Scott, God Is My Co-Pilot quotation considered below in “The Embrace of Coca-Cola.”

John Szarkowski | Garrick Theatre | 1955 | AC 1989.71 51

52 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Jerome Liebling Trust

John Szarkowski’s Garrick Theatre, taken in 1955, speaks less

in fact, can we see anybody on the dirty, snow-covered street.

to an exploration of personal identity and more to the character of

The scene is desolate and somewhat eerie. The empty restaurant

the American landscape and the legacy of great American artisans.

functions somewhat like Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes (considered

The photograph is part of Szarkowski’s project to photograph

below), isolating the building for our examination as a container,

Louis Sullivan’s architecture, to document and celebrate it, and

meant to be both a commercial space and a social space. Detached

to use it, paired with biographical information and quotations, to

from its patrons, the café is unable to hold its identity as a café, and

commemorate Sullivan’s life in the 1956 book The Idea of Louis

it exudes a sense of dereliction. The advertisements in the window

Sullivan. The architectural critic Blair Kamin has characterized

shout out to no one, and the sign “Waitress Wanted” seems to ask

Szarkowski’s project as an effort to “reconnect architecture with

for more than a waitress. r

human activity and the urban environment,” or, as Szarkowski put 73

it, to record not only a building’s “art facts” but also its “life facts.” 74 This photograph of a highly praised early skyscraper contrasts the elegant arcade with the ground-floor Ham N’ Egger restaurant: “The bite that’s rite mornin’ noon & nite.” Revealing his outlook on this structure’s evolution, Szarkowski pairs this photograph in his book with a quotation from Genius and the Mobocracy, by Frank Lloyd Wright, one of Sullivan’s students: “He [Sullivan] had taken great pride in the performance of the Imperial Hotel, volunteered to write articles concerning it for the architectural record. ‘At last, Frank,’ he said, ‘something they can’t take away from you.’ I wonder why he thought ‘they’ couldn’t take it away from me? ‘They’ can take anything away from anybody.” 75 The title eatery in Jerome Liebling’s Toddy’s Café, of 1964, in contrast, is housed in a nondescript building. Although a sign assures us that the café is open, we can see no one inside – nor,

Jerome Liebling | Toddy’s Café | 1964 | AC 2001.672.5 53

54 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Weegee (Arthur Fellig) / International Center of Photography / Getty Images

Weegee’s and Warhol’s Boxes

E PA R AT E D B Y A B O U T T W E N T Y Y E A R S ,

“[A]lthough all of the elements were there for anyone to

Weegee’s Out at Three in the Morning, of 1940, and

use, no one has ever used them as Weegee has.” 77 When

Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes,i of 1964, encourage

Warhol moved to New York in 1949, Weegee’s books were

comparison. Weegee, whose real name was Arthur Fellig,

still causing a sensation. Weegee’s passage from photo-

was an audacious news photographer working in the 1930s

journalist to artist presages Warhol’s self-conscious shift

and ’40s who took photographs of car accidents, house

from graphic designer to fine artist. Weegee’s practice of

fires, fresh corpses, thieves, murderers, gangsters, and

signing his photographs “Weegee the Famous” likewise

other sordid scenes of city life. In contrast to the emotional

foreshadows Warhol’s cultivation of celebrity status,

intensity of Weegee’s photographs, Andy Warhol’s Pop art

enacting the elevation of a common man (in each case,

was cool and dispassionate. Nevertheless, the former was

an immigrant’s child) to fame.

an influence on the latter. As the art historian David Hopkins

In Weegee’s Out at Three in the Morning, a young girl

has persuasively demonstrated, Weegee’s photographs of

sits on a dirty curb. She slumps, feet splayed and knees

accidents, gangsters, and transvestites informed “Warhol’s

together, with her elbows resting on her thighs. Her eyes

1962–63 Disasters series and his Most Wanted Men, created

are closed; is she blinking or dozing off? Weegee captioned

in 1963 for the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

More generally, Weegee’s elevation of “low” culture to

this photograph in Naked City, “Little girl ... what are you doing out at three in the morning ... you should be home

“high” art likely also set an example for Warhol. Weegee’s

asleep.” 78 The girl holds a box above her as if she is trying

photographs, originally taken solely for newspaper

to wear it like a blanket or disappear into it as if it were a

publication, were included in two exhibitions at MoMA

shell. The label on this box reveals that it was made to hold

in 1943 and 1944 to popular and critical acclaim and

twenty-four boxes of Hershey’s “New Style” plain milk

subsequently published in photo books. In the foreword

chocolate bars, each costing only five cents.

to Weegee’s first book, Naked City, published in 1945, the editor William McCleery, Weegee’s former boss at PM Picture News, names Weegee an “Artist,” with a capital A, whose contributions lay in his creative selections:

i Andy Warhol, Brillo Boxes, 1964 (National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON, 15298.1-8), accessed January 4, 2012, http://www.gallery .ca/en/see/collections/artwork.php?mkey=7249.

Weegee | Out at Three in the Morning | ca. 1940 | AC 1994.771 55

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

[A]lthough all of the elements were there for anyone to use, no one has ever used them as Weegee has.

56 | PHOTOdocument

â&#x20AC;?

Twenty years later, Andy Warhol painted rows of Cocaii

full, because the bottle is transparent – Warhol’s Brillo Box

Cola bottles and Campbell’s soup cans and then took his

offers no clues as to whether it is empty or full. Since it is

explorations of commercial design into sculptural forms,

a three-dimensional object, it could very well be full, but in

producing plywood boxes, in a literal factory style, that

fact, it is empty. As the artist described himself, so with the

he silkscreened to look like the containers for Brillo soap

box: the surface is all there is.

pads, Mott’s apple juice, Del Monte peaches, and other 79

In each of these artworks, the packaging both repre-

products. Knowing that Warhol identified Weegee as a

sents the product and exists separately from it. When

source of inspiration and that Warhol undoubtedly saw

confronted with Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, we find our attention

this photograph in Weegee’s Naked City, it is tempting to

directed to the physical appearance of the packaging, its

compare the two images of boxes.

three-dimensionality, its colors, and the words on it. It

In Out at Three in the Morning, Weegee invites the

asks the question, What is the purpose of this box if it isn’t

viewer to observe a tender moment. This photograph

holding soap pads as intended? Warhol’s clever answer is:

highlights the rough-and-tumble of the city, but the

It doesn’t have to be used for anything; it’s art. Weegee’s

tone and second-person address of Weegee’s caption

Hershey’s box, on the other hand, provides an alternative

emphasizes Weegee’s presence at the scene and the gentle

answer by suggesting the possibility of reuse. Our attention

nature of the encounter. In comparison, Warhol’s Brillo

is drawn to the physical appearance of the Hershey’s box,

Boxes are divorced from any context and are completely

but we quickly focus instead on the fact that the box has

sterile. What Warhol’s and Weegee’s “boxes” have in

found a new function, empty of bars – it is the empty box

common, however, is the fact that the viewer is presented

that playfully shelters this girl at three in the morning. r

with not a product but a product package. Warhol famously said, “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” Unlike Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans – which we know must be full, because the cans are unopened – and Coca-Cola – which we know must be

ii Andy Warhol, Green Coca-Cola Bottles, 1962 (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 68.25), accessed December 24, 2011, http:// whitney.org/Collection/AndyWarhol/6825; Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962 (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 476.1996.1-32), accessed December 24, 2011, http://www.moma.org/collection /browse_results.php?object_id=79809.

58 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Jerome Liebling Trust

The Embrace of Coca-Cola

E X T T O T H E F L A G , few things are as American

used to agree that we were fighting for The American

as Coca-Cola. In 1936 when Roy Stryker, head

Girl. She to us was America, Democracy, Coca-Colas,

of the Historical Section of the Resettlement

Hamburgers ... The American Way of Life.”82 Considering

Administration (later the Farm Security Administration),

Scott’s association of “The American Girl” with Coca-Cola,

wrote to the photographers under his direction with a

it is reasonable to conflate Scott’s American Girl with the

number of suggested subjects, Coca-Cola was the only

Coca-Cola girls; each Coca-Cola girl is the archetypal

soda – and one of only two products – he referred to by

American Girl.

name. With soda fountains listed under the subsection “American Habits,” Stryker’s memo suggests that drinking 80

Jerome Liebling’s Young Girl, taken in 1952, presents the viewer with a different sort of Coca-Cola girl. In Liebling’s

Coca-Cola is a characteristic American activity – exactly

photograph, a young girl leans, with one hand and one

the impression Coca-Cola’s executives and advertisers

elbow, on a sign reading “Drink Coca-Cola.” Her posture

strived to convey through the product’s copious original

appears relaxed, but upon closer inspection it reveals

marketing, including magazine advertisements and a wide

uncertainty. One hand appears to float, unsure whether to

variety of promotional materials, such as change trays.

rest or run. The thumb of her other hand presses noticeably

The Coca-Cola Company promoted its beverage as

into the pad of her forefinger. The Coca-Cola logo behind

wholesome, refreshing, delicious, and patriotic, using

the girl appears to caress or embrace her, conjuring up

typical American scenes of the type Stryker mentioned,

associations of Coca-Cola with happy American families.

featuring outdoorsy boys, hardworking men, and happy

The Coca-Cola sign’s embrace could even be compared

families. Above all, the company preferred to feature

to a mother’s; the girl leans on Coke as she would lean

“Coca-Cola girls,” beautiful women with Cokes in hand.

on a trusted family member.

During World War II, Robert W. Woodruff, then president

Liebling took this photograph in the West Side of

of the company, promised Coca-Cola for only a nickel to

Saint Paul, Minnesota, nicknamed the “Ellis Island” of

American GIs and established sixty-three overseas bottling

Minneapolis-Saint Paul for its diverse population of recent

plants to supply the troops.81 In his memoir, God Is My

immigrant families;83 his subject appears to be Hispanic.

Co-Pilot, Colonel Robert L. Scott remembers, “[W]e all

Bearing in mind that, at the time, Coca-Cola ads featured

Jerome Liebling | Young Girl | 1952 | AC 2001.672.3 59

60 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

predominantly Caucasian people, this photograph suggests

Through this telling juxtaposition, Friedlander pits

that the relationship between Coca-Cola and an American

the commercial aims of capitalism against selfless, noble

identity is not as monolithic as the advertisements

values: Coca-Cola invokes the ideals of patriotism and

indicate. The Coca-Cola sign in this photograph, while it

wholesomeness, while Father Duffy actually embodies

may be interpreted as a comforting presence, may also

them. With his stern expression and his fists at the ready,

be read as a symbol of an unfamiliar and perhaps even

Duffy could even be regarded as preparing to take on

antagonistic environment. This little girl is undoubtedly

Coca-Cola as his adversary. r

a face of America – an American Girl – but one who is underrepresented in the prevailing commercial depiction of American identity. This photograph undercuts Coca-Cola’s claims that it quintessentially represents America. As in Liebling’s photograph, the Coca-Cola sign in Lee Friedlander’s NYC, 1974 may be interpreted as embracing or antagonizing the figure in the photograph, here a statue on the northern side of Times Square representing Father Duffy (1871–1932), a highly decorated World War I chaplain. The sign proclaims “Enjoy Coca-Cola” and (barely visible, in neon tubing) “It’s the real thing ... Coke.” The tail on the C of “Coca” appears to point to Father Duffy, and the edge of his jacket echoes its curve. By visually connecting the sign to the statue, Friedlander seems to shift the referent of the advertising message: considered together, the sign seems to announce, perhaps ironically, that the statue of Duffy is “the real thing,” and, perhaps sincerely, that the heroic figure depicted is as much an American icon as the soda.

Lee Friedlander | NYC, 1974 | 1974 | AC 1985.8.18 61

62 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

1960s–1970s: Taking Back the Word

A N Y P H O T O H I S T O R I A N S believe that John Szarkowski,

successes have been cheap and petty. I read the newspapers, the

curator of photography at MoMA, whom we encountered

columnists, some books, I look at the magazines (our press). They all

previously in his role as practicing photographer, “almost single-

deal in illusions and fantasies. I can only conclude that we have lost

handedly elevated photography’s status in the last half-century to

ourselves, and that the bomb may finish the job permanently, and it

that of a fine art.” 84 In his seminal New Documents exhibition, which

just doesn’t matter, we have not loved life.” 90

featured works by Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, and Diane

As Davis has noted, a number of painful events in the 1960s

Arbus, Szarkowski identifies a shift in the documentary purpose:

seemed to suggest that “American society was somehow spinning

the new photographers’ “ambition was not to make good pictures,

out of control.”91 Winogrand had a corresponding special affection

but through photography to know life.” 85 Furthermore, their aim was

for those of his pictures that were almost out of control, the

not to reform life, simply to know it. The result was a style that

photographs in which the triumph of form over chaos appeared

maintained the informal aesthetic of the previous decades while

precarious.92 Profoundly affected by the Cuban Missile Crisis,

divesting it somewhat of its intensely personal inflection. The curator

Winogrand came to realize his own powerlessness and to feel

Keith Davis describes the style of these decades as a “studied

liberated by that realization.93 These self-revelations helped to

looseness,” an art that appeared “uninflected by opinion.” 87

shape an “opinionless” or Zen (as I would call it) attitude in his work.

With the general acceptance of photography as art, some

Expected to fulfill the roles of philosopher and therapist, Winogrand

American universities ceased to view photographers as experts

and his peers seemed to reply that “everything could be seen;

capable of sharing “craft secrets” and began to view them as

nothing ... could be understood – at least not in traditional ways.”94

“cultural philosophers and therapists.” 88 Although Winogrand “insisted that he was not a philosopher and did not accept 89

When Louis Faurer returned from Europe in 1974, he found Times Square to have become “a seedy caricature of its former

the obligations incumbent on that role,” his successful 1963

glamour” in his absence, with “more burlesque houses than first-

application for a Guggenheim Fellowship offers more philosophical

run cinemas.” 95 Winogrand’s New York City, 1968 bears out this

reflection than do those of preceding Fellows Robert Frank and John

observation with its view of dirty gutters and dingy marquees, one

Szarkowski. Winogrand wrote, “I look at the pictures I have done

of which even advertises adult-themed entertainment, including

up to now, and they make me feel that who we are and what we feel

Naughty Dallas, a feature film about a Texas stripper. The chance

and what is to become of us just doesn’t matter. Our aspirations and

crossing of a short, barrel-chested man and a woman in an

Garry Winogrand | New York City, 1968 | 1968 | AC 1979.23.2 63

64 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Elliott Erwitt / Magnum Photos

unconventional, perhaps bizarre, outfit transforms this image of a dirty street into the portrayal of an “absurdity of everyday life.”

In New York City, 1968, text appears in the cluttered cityscape.

With the violence of the civil rights movement raging and U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War increasing, the words can be read editorially as a comment on the tumultuous state of things.

In the background is a bold sign for “Hamburgers,” not unlike that in White Tower, 14th Street, NYC, by Robert Frank, whom Winogrand names as an inspiration. Yet, whereas Frank’s cynical photograph

Social Politics

juxtaposes lovely women with the thought of desirable, albeit

I N T H E P O L I T I C A L L Y and socially charged atmosphere of

perhaps boring, hamburgers, Winogrand’s image evokes thoughts of

the 1960s and 1970s, many photography critics came to regard

greasy hamburgers, sticky theater seats, and oddball city-dwellers,

the photograph as inherently political. For such viewers, Garry

all thrown together in the hodgepodge of the urban environment.

Winogrand’s 1975 book Women Are Beautiful, showing women

In Elliott Erwitt’s Lost Persons/Pasadena, 1963, the text does not

that Winogrand encountered in the street over the course of more

disappear into the fabric of the scene but rather emerges to identify a

than a decade, appeared chauvinistic. Feminists criticized the

particular space. The contrast between the three women presumably

book for being voyeuristic.98 The concept of the male gaze is easy

waiting for the people from whom they’ve been separated is amusing

to understand in the example of New York City 1972, included in

and familiar. One of the women looks anxious; another appears non-

the book, in which the phone booth obscures the woman’s face,

plussed; a third woman is matter-of-factly and nonchalantly putting a

rendering her passively open to unfettered, potentially salacious

warm jacket on her sleeping toddler. She may not be lost at all.

inspection by passersby, the photographer, and us.

True to Davis’s description of Erwitt’s work as “witty, poignant, 97

The woman’s hand covers the telephone receiver, rendering her

ominous,” however, the intersection of this photograph’s text

mute as well as blind. In the space of her silence, scattered text in

and figures is both humorous and portentous. While the women’s

the vicinity imposes commentary on the woman’s body and sexuality.

suburban dress may suggest a generally comfortable existence, the

With her leg propped up almost enough to reveal her pudendum,

ways in which they cross their arms over their chests (appearing

it becomes difficult not to read a sign for “All Beef Frankfurters,”

defensive and disapproving) and stand precariously at the ends of

directly behind her, as an innuendo. The advertisements for

the bench convey concern. The phrase “lost persons” resonates with

Budweiser beer provide more insinuation. The word “Bud ” – in

Davis’s assertion of a pervasive feeling of spinning out of control.

addition to being a nickname for the beer, a beverage evocative of

Elliott Erwitt | Lost Persons/Pasadena, 1963 | 1963 | AC 1979.106.12 65

66 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

masculine culture – ironically also refers to a flower, the reproductive

photographs. In this photograph, Sekaer turns his camera to the

part of a plant, soon to open. Here, “Bud ” elicits the interpretation

clearly labeled “COLORED” entrance of a movie theater. The letters

of a budding young woman, budding breasts, or budding sexuality.

are painted in white, making them highly visible and seeming to

Exhibitionism, however, is the sibling of voyeurism. Significantly,

reinforce the sense of a Caucasian voice of authority. Professor Eliza-

a second woman in this photograph carries a copy of Cosmopolitan,

beth Abel has noted that one of the men is splattered in white paint,

the era’s leading sexually liberal and purportedly progressive

suggesting that he may have painted the sign; for Abel, this observa-

women’s magazine. This serves as a reminder that second-wave

tion opens up the possibility of an additional and conflicting reading,

feminism encouraged women to embrace their sexuality and be

whereby the men reclaim a degree of agency over the identifier.100

empowered by it. If the central woman is attracted to exhibitionism,

In addition to the “COLORED” sign, the photograph includes

then her relinquishment of agency is fundamentally an exercise of

another, subtler, instance of racism: the poster for the “jungle

her authority over her own body and a demonstration of the power

thriller” serial The Call of the Savage. Like the better-known Tarzan

of her sexuality. As is still the case, however, Cosmo is precariously

stories, these movies depend on the concept of the exotic other and

balanced between liberating women and reinforcing patriarchal

therefore reinforce the denigrating notion of “ethnic” peoples as

norms. Four decades later, these two interpretations, underscoring

savage. Despite being raised in the jungle, these stories’ Caucasian

voyeurism and exhibitionism, remain inseparable.

protagonists are implied to be inherently more civilized than their

Almost forty years before Winogrand photographed this scene, Peter Sekaer captured a combination of text and figures to a similar effect, albeit regarding race, in Colored Movie Entrance, Anniston,

counterparts, represented in the poster as a turbaned man; darkskinned, scantily clad people; and a highly anthropomorphized ape. In Joel Meyerowitz’s New Mexico (Indians in street), of 1972, as in

Alabama. Sekaer took the photograph in 1936 while accompanying

Sekaer’s Colored Movie Entrance, the intersection of text and figures

Walker Evans on assignment for the Resettlement Administration.

raises questions of stereotypes and issues of agency in constructing

Sekaer had previously worked as a sign maker, specializing in

racial identity. Meyerowitz’s photograph features a shop that sells

theater posters, and that experience, initially, may have attracted

“Western” items such as boots, saddle goods, and belts, evoking

him to this scene. Although he declined to join the overtly political

thoughts of cowboys. A painting of an Indian in a loincloth and

Photo League, Sekaer critically observed American racial inequal-

headband with a bow and arrow on the outside wall of the store

ity, including the segregating words of the “Jim Crow” laws in his

reinforces the imaginary setting of this scene as the folkloric

Garry Winogrand | New York City 1972 | 1972 | AC 1979.23.11 67

68 | PHOTOdocument ÂŠ Peter Sekaer Estate

American Wild West. The nearby men are identified in the title as

markets, appreciating them as a “microcosm of American society” 101

Indians, yet they look nothing like the stereotypical representation of

where a variety of lifestyles are displayed and goods are recycled.

a Native American on the wall. In fact, their hats, button-down shirts,

Flea markets, which are almost always local affairs, are inherently

jeans, boots, and decorated belts make them more closely resemble

democratic. They perform a “taking-back” of commerce, whereby

the envisioned cowboy. The street signs in the upper right corner

agency lies with the individual buyers and sellers and the market

succinctly telegraph the main question: Is there only “One Way” to

operates outside of the mainstream of big businesses.

“Walk” like an Indian? The logo of the American Indian Movement i

Untitled #34, taken in 1976, and Untitled #66, taken in 1977,

(AIM), which arose around the time of Meyerowitz’s photograph,

from Levinson’s California Flea Market Series further demonstrate a

suggests an answer. It combines the newly adopted hand sign for

“taking-back” of agency over commercial language. By emphasizing

peace and a stylized profile of a Native American wherein the two

the texts on the recycled packaging, Levinson summarizes how texts

fingers of the peace sign make the feathers in the Native American’s

can be either endowed with or divested of meaning. In Untitled #66,

headband. AIM’s logo embraces an antiquated representation,

comic books are provided for browsing in cardboard boxes labeled

reclaims it, and updates it, imbuing it with new power and the

for oranges and Five’s dog food. At the flea market, the intended

promise of equality.

message of these boxes, carefully constructed to sell dog food and

Without Meyerowitz’s title, we may not necessarily have

oranges, is made obsolete. The fact that this text “disappears”

identified these men as Native Americans. Perhaps Meyerowitz

encourages us to think about the recycling nature of the flea market,

knew for a fact that these men were Native American, but the

where original commercial appeal is subverted by a context where

conscientious viewer should question whether the photographer

authority lies with individual buyers and sellers. For those in the

perhaps fell prey to a stereotype or the desire to capitalize on

photograph, this packaging matters very little. They take for granted

the possibility of a witty scene when naming this photograph.

that the packaging is second-hand, like its contents – and it is the contents only that are of interest and are allowed to speak for

Flea Market Economy B E T W E E N 1 9 7 5 A N D 1 9 7 7 , the young photographer Joel D. Levinson traveled along the coast of California photographing flea

themselves. Comic books, like photography, commercial art, and

i See American Indian Movement Web site, accessed January 5, 2012, http://www.aimovement.org/.

Peter Sekaer | Colored Movie Entrance, Anniston, Alabama | 1936 | AC 1991.21 69

ÂŠ Joel Meyerowitz

70 | PHOTOdocument

other media we have encountered, have throughout their history had

it was during that decade that the term appropriation art came into

a controversial status, which imparts this scene with another layer

widespread use. In the 1980s, several artists appropriated the motifs

of subversion. Mass-produced and ephemeral, comic books were

and rhetoric of advertising to launch cultural critiques. Barbara

considered a low or seditious medium and were even associated

Kruger, one well-known representative of appropriation art, produces

with teenage delinquency.

poster-like compositions using photographs she finds in magazines.

In Untitled #34, the former commercial affiliation of a white van

By substituting pointed statements for advertising slogans, Kruger

once used by Hostess Market has been blacked out. A cardboard

creates charged juxtapositions of text and image. ii Her appropriation

box-cum-dressing room is printed with codes of mass production,

and alteration of the advertising “mode of address” allows her to

which, for the average viewer and in the present context, have

take advantage of and undercut its effectiveness.

become meaningless. The makeshift dressing room has been hand-

The twentieth century marked the successful use of fine art in

labeled as such and illustrated with a pair of winking eyes – it has

advertising. The Englishman Thomas J. Barratt initiated this trend

been given new code, which assumes the signifying role of the

by arranging to reproduce Sir John Everett Millais’s A Child’s World –

printed codes. Interestingly, the taking-back sentiment described

a painting of a boy blowing bubbles – as an advertisement for Pears

in these flea market photographs is also evident in the graphic

soap. iii By the 1980s, art and advertising had come to quote one

design of the era itself, by a renewed preference for hand-created

another, freely and cleverly, in a cyclical exchange. For instance,

posters and the rise of do-it-yourself publishing, made possible

originally appropriated from advertising, Kruger’s aesthetic was in

by typewriters and photocopiers.102

turn appropriated for the advertising campaign of Rostov Vodka. To take an additional telling example: the artist George Rodrigue,

Into the 1980s I F L E V I N S O N ’ S P H O T O G R A P H S demonstrate a “taking-back,” then Mary Ellen Mark’s Biker with Jesus T-shirt, 6/1988 illustrates a cyclical taking, taking, taking: a loop of appropriation. Although the practice of appropriation was common in art before the 1980s (all of the work we have considered arguably demonstrates appropriation)

painter of the iconic Blue Dog, accepted a commission from Xerox

ii See Barbara Kruger, Untitled (your body is a battleground), 1989 (The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica), accessed December 24, 2011, http://broadartfoundation.org/artist_43.html. iii See (after) Sir John Everett Millais, Bubbles (A Child’s World), 1886 (Victoria and Albert Museum, London, E.1660-1931), accessed December 24, 2011, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O75697/print-bubbles-a-childs-world/.

Joel Meyerowitz | New Mexico (Indians in street) | 1972 | AC 2000.441.10 71

ÂŠ Joel D. Levinson

72 | PHOTOdocument

ÂŠ Joel D. Levinson

ÂŠ Mary Ellen Mark

74 | PHOTOdocument

to paint original advertisements for color inkjet printers and, after completing the commercial project, made a series of paintings 104

replicating the ads that had reproduced his paintings.

The T-shirt worn by the man in Mark’s photograph demon-

This moment in the 1980s brings us to the conclusion of the present project – and leaves us at the brink of a particularly rich phase in the exchange between the arts, at the blossoming of the digital age. In the three decades since the personal computer

strates a similar cycle of appropriation. The T-shirt designer has

became widely accessible, digital and Web-based technologies

appropriated the Pepsi logo, replacing the word “Pepsi” with the

have vastly reshaped our experiences as consumers of products,

word “Jesus” and the 1984 Pepsi slogan “The Choice of the Next

advertisements, text, photography, and other art media and have

Generation” with “The Choice Of The LAST Generation,” a reference

altered the production of commercial art, fine art, and photography,

to certain Christian groups’ interpretations of the Book of Revelation

once again renewing the questions, “What is art?” and “How does

as a prophecy of an end time. The design not only replaces the

it reflect who we are?” r

Pepsi message but critiques it, using a larger, emphatic font size for the “LAST” to send an unequivocal message: a righteous religious proclamation is more worthy of reading than a commercial, hedonistic advertising slogan. In taking this photograph, Mark captures the irony of the selfrighteous, explicitly anticommercial design’s placement on a T-shirt, itself a commercial object, a placement that divests the resulting image of its persuasive power. Yet Mark’s photograph of this marginalized person, a biker, is not without empathy. The photograph may not express an opinion for or against consumerism, or for or against religion, but ultimately, it leaves the viewer pondering individual identity and enfranchisement and perhaps also what may be valuable in life, to whom, and why.

Mary Ellen Mark | Biker with Jesus T-shirt, 6/1988 | 1988 | AC 1993.53.5 75

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Endnotes 1 Joel Meyerowitz, Creating a Sense of Place (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, in association with Constance Sullivan Editions, 1990), 20.

17 David Lomas, “‘New in Art, they are already soaked in humanity’: Word and Image, 1900–1945,” in Art, Word and Image (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), 115.

2 Michael North, “Mechanical Recording and the Modern Arts,” introduction to Camera Works: Photography and the Twentieth-Century Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 3–4.

18 Ibid., 130.

3 James Elkins, On Pictures and the Words that Fail Them (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). See Chapter One, “Marks, Traces, Traits, Contours, Orli, and Splendores.” 4 David Kemmerer, “How Words Capture Visual Experience: The Perspective from Cognitive Neuroscience,” in Words and the Mind: How Words Capture Human Experience, ed. Barbara C. Malt and Phillip Wolff (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 287. 5 Andy Grundberg, “Walker Evans, Connoisseur of the Commonplace,” in Crisis of the Real: Writings on Photography, 3rd ed. (New York: Aperture, 2010), 68.

19 Ibid., 111. 20 North, “Mechanical Recording and the Modern Arts,” 22. 21 Ibid., 18 22 Ibid., 22. 23 Patrick Cramsie, The Story of Graphic Design: From the Invention of Writing to the Birth of Digital Design (New York: Abrams, 2010), 228. 24 Michael Corris, “Word and Image in Art since 1945,” in Art, Word and Image (London: Reaktion Books, 2010), 238. 25 Cramsie, Story of Graphic Design, 149.

6 Roland Marchand, introduction to Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), xx.

26 Ghislaine Wood, “The Age of Paper,” in Art Noveau, 1890–1914, ed. Paul Greenhalgh (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000), 149.

7 Lawrence Dietz, Soda Pop: The History, Advertising, Art, and Memorabilia of Soft Drinks in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973), 110.

27 Barry Hoffman, The Fine Art of Advertising: Irreverent, Irrepressible, Irresistibly Ironic (New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2002), 9.

8 Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, xxi–xxii.

28 Ibid., 101.

9 Peter Barberie, Looking at Atget (New Haven: Philadelphia Museum of Art in association with Yale University Press, 2005), 69.

29 Peter Sekaer to Eleanor Roosevelt, August 24, 1936, quoted in Peter Sekaer and Allison N. Kemmerer, Peter Sekaer: American Pictures (Andover, MA: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, in association with Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, 1999), 7.

10 James Elkins, The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing (San Diego: Harvest Books, 1996), 237. 11 Ibid., 11. 12 Peter Sekaer, “Nothing to Photograph Here,” U.S. Camera (August 1941), quoted in Annemette Sørensen, Peter Sekaer: Fotografier fra 1930’ernes USA (Copenhagen: Det kongelige Bibliotek, 1990), 66. 13 Barberie, Looking at Atget, 3. 14 John T. Hill, Signs of Life: Photographs by Peter Sekaer (Atlanta: High Museum of Art, with Steidl Publishers, Göttingen, in cooperation with Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, 2010), 18. 15 Barberie, Looking at Atget, 30. For discussion on the Interiors Series, see “Interiors Series,” in Ibid., 22–41. 16 Sekaer, “Nothing to Photograph Here,” in Sørensen, Peter Sekaer, 66.

30 Thomas Seelig and Urs Stahel, eds., The Ecstasy of Things: From the Functional Object to the Fetish in 20th Century Photographs (Göttingen, Germany: Steidl Verlag, 2004), 11. 31 Klára Fogarasi, “Mounting, Matting, Framing, Passe-Partout, Presentation,” in Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, ed. John Hannavy, vol. 1, A-I (New York: Routledge, 2008), 951–952. 32 Bonnie Yochelson and Berenice Abbott, Berenice Abbott: Changing New York (New York: New Press/Museum of the City of New York, 1997), 11. 33 Sekaer to Roosevelt, August 24, 1936, quoted in Sekaer and Kemmerer, American Pictures, 7. 34 François Brunet, Photography and Literature (London: Reaktion Books, 2009), 82–83. 77

35 Photo League, “For a League of American Photographers,” Photo Notes (August 1938): 1. Repr. in Photo League, and National Film and Photo League, Photo Notes (Rochester, N.Y.: Visual Studies Workshop, 1977). Page references are to the 1977 reprint. 36 Ibid., 4. 37 Cramsie, Story of Graphic Design, 124. 38 Frederick Allen, Secret Formula: How Brilliant Marketing and Relentless Salesmanship Made Coca-Cola the Best-Known Product in the World (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995), 18. 39 Hagley Museum and Library, “History of Patent Medicine,” Patent Medicine Online Exhibition, accessed December 20, 2011, http://www.hagley.lib.de.us /library/exhibits/patentmed/history/history.html. 40 Dietz, Soda Pop, 18. 41 Michele H. Bogart, “Posters versus Billboards,” in Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 89–105. 42 Yochelson and Abbott, Changing New York, 24. 43 Ibid., 355. 44 Lee D. Witkin and Barbara London, The Collector’s Guide to Photographs (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1979), 132. 45 Carl Chiarenza, Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and Terrors (New York: New York Graphic Society, in association with the Center for Creative Photography, 1982), 49. 46 Thomas Hine, The Total Package: The Evolution and Secret Meanings of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Tubes (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1995), 2. 47 City of New York Parks and Recreation, “Concessions: M-Sk,” Parks History, accessed December 20, 2011, http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_about/parks _history/concessions_4.html. 48 Hearst Metrotone News [Vol. 1, no. 277 – excerpt. More free milk for N.Y. babies – Mrs. W.R. Hearst opens new station to supply kids of Harlem with needed nourishment – New York City], film, 1930. WorldCat. 49 Keith Melder, Hail to the Candidate: Presidential Campaigns from Banners to Broadcasts (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), 30. Melder quotes an unnamed “modern student of campaigning.”

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50 Jordan M. Wright, “1952–Present,” in Campaigning for President (New York: Smithsonian Books/Collins, 2008), 207. 51 Melder, Hail to the Candidate, 30. 52 Wright, Campaigning for President, 200–201. 53 Anne Tucker, Louis Faurer (London: Merrell, in association with The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2002), 27. 54 Lisa Hostetler, Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940–1959 (Munich: Delmonico, in association with the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, 2009), 165. 55 Keith F. Davis, An American Century of Photography: From Dry-Plate to Digital; The Hallmark Photographic Collection, 2nd ed., rev. and enl. (Kansas City, MO: Hallmark Cards, in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1999), 296. 56 Hostetler, Street Seen, 104–105. 57 Barberie, Looking at Atget, 94. For discussion on Atget and Surrealism, see “Abbott and Levy Looking at Atget,” in Ibid., 53–95. 58 North, “Mechanical Recording and the Modern Arts,” 21. 59 Davis, American Century of Photography, 264. 60 Frank Paulin, “A Brief Account of My Career,” Frank Paulin Photography, accessed December 20, 2011, http://www.frankpaulinphotography.com/Bio.html. 61 Leah Ollman, “Art review: Frank Paulin at Duncan Miller,”Culture Monster (blog), Los Angeles Times, November 13, 2009, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com /culturemonster/2009/11/art-review-frank-paulin-at-duncan-miller.html. 62 Hostetler, Street Seen, 76. 63 Barberie, Looking at Atget, 54. 64 Tucker, Louis Faurer, 14. 65 Ibid., 39. 66 Lisa Hostetler, “Louis Faurer and Film Noir,” in Tucker, Louis Faurer, 49–61. 67 Ibid., 54–55. 68 R. W. N. “Screen and Reality,” review of I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, Santa Rosa Productions, The New York Times, January 30, 1958, http://movies.nytimes .com/movie/review?res=9802E2DB123DEF34BC4850DFB7668383649EDE.

69 Max Kozloff, Frank Paulin: Out of the Limelight (New York: Silverstein Publishing, in association with Silverstein Photography, 2007), 13.

85 John Szarkowski, Winogrand: Figments from the Real World (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1988), 41.

70 For similar discussion of Louis Faurer’s New York, N.Y., 1949, see Tucker, Louis Faurer, 54.

86 Gefter, “Szarkowski, Curator of Photography.”

71 Seelig and Stahel, The Ecstasy of Things, 175. 72 Hostetler, Street Seen, 142. 73 Blair Kamin, “Through a lens, courageously: Art Institute of Chicago spotlights photographers who put Louis Sullivan’s genius in enduring focus,” Cityscapes (blog), Chicago Tribune, June 21, 2010, http://featuresblogs .chicagotribune.com/theskyline/2010/06/art-institute-spotlights -photographers-who-put-louis-sullivans-genius-in-focus.html?utm _source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed %3A+chicagotribune%2Ftheskyline+ (ChicagoTribune+-+Cityscapes). 74 John Szarkowski, The Idea of Louis Sullivan, new ed. (Boston: Bullfinch, 2000), xvii. 75 Ibid., 82. 76 See David Hopkins, “Weegee and Warhol: Voyeurism, Shock and the Discourse on Criminality,” History of Photography 25, no. 4 (Winter 2001). 77 William McCleery, foreword to Naked City, by Weegee [Arthur Fellig] (New York: Essential Books, 1945; repr., New York: Da Capo, 1975), 7. 78 Weegee, Naked City, 28. 79 The Andy Warhol Museum, “But Is It Art? Taste and Bias Activity,” The Warhol: Resources and Lessons, accessed December 20, 2011, http://edu.warhol.org/aract_brillo.html. 80 Dietz, Soda Pop, 110–111. 81 Allen, Secret Formula, 8. 82 Robert L. Scott, God Is My Co-Pilot (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944), 166. 83 Jerome Liebling, The Minnesota Photographs, 1949–1969 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1997), 60.

87 Davis, American Century of Photography, 401–402. 88 Szarkowski, Winogrand, 31. 89 Ibid., 40. 90 Ibid., 34. 91 Davis, American Century of Photography, 252. 92 Szarkowski, Winogrand, 21. 93 Ibid., 20. 94 Davis, American Century of Photography, 402. 95 Tucker, Louis Faurer, 40. 96 Center for Creative Photography, Arizona, “Photographs Donated by Garry Winogrand (1928–1984),” press release, 1984, Object File, Mead Art Museum, Amherst College. 97 Davis, American Century of Photography, 297. 98 Ibid., 398. 99 Hill, Signs of Life, 15. 100 Elizabeth Abel, “Double Take: Photography, Cinema, and the Segregated Theater,” Critical Inquiry 34, no. S2 (Winter 2008): S16–S17, doi: 10.1086/529086. 101 Helmut Gernsheim, “California Flea Markets,” in Photographs, Joel D. Levinson (San Francisco: PM Publications, 1984), unpaginated. 102 See Cramsie, “Handmade and Homespun: Illustrated Modernism & Psychedelia, c. 1950–c. 1970” and “Tearing It Up: Punk, c. 1975–c.1985,” chaps. 17 and 18 in Story of Graphic Design. 103 Davis, American Century of Photography, 429. 104 Hoffman, Fine Art of Advertising, 132, 137.

84 Philip Gefter, “Szarkowski, Curator of Photography, Dies at 81,” New York Times, July 9, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/arts/09szarkowski .html?pagewanted.

Checklist Berenice Abbott American, 1898–1991 Blossom Restaurant, 103 Bowery, 1935 Gelatin silver print Mount: 11 3/4 x 13 in (29.8 x 33 cm); Image: 7 5/16 x 9 7/16 in (18.6 x 24 cm) Gift of Paul Katz, AC 1998.195

Elliott Erwitt American, born in 1928 Lost Persons/Pasadena, 1963, 1963 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 8 x 10 in (20.32 x 25.4 cm); Image: 6 3/8 x 9 1/2 in (16.1925 x 24.13 cm) Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Myers, AC 1979.106.12

Berenice Abbott American, 1898–1991 Row of Commercial Buildings, 1930s Gelatin silver print Mount: 8 1/16 x 10 in (20.47875 x 25.4 cm); Image: 7 1/4 x 9 3/16 in (18.415 x 23.33625 cm) Gift of Paul Katz, AC 1998.199

Louis Faurer American, 1916–2001 Globe Theatre, NY, NY, 1950, printed ca. 1981 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.94 x 35.56 cm); Image: 7 1/16 x 10 5/8 in (17.9388 x 26.9875 cm) Gift of Leonard A. Fink (Class of 1952), AC 1986.114

Eugène Atget French, 1857–1927 Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, 1925 Gelatin silver printing-out paper print Mount: 12 1/2 x 10 3/4 in (31.75 x 27.305 cm); Image: 6 7/8 x 8 5/8 in (17.4625 x 21.9075 cm) Museum Purchase, AC 2002.119

Louis Faurer American, 1916–2001 NY, NY, ca. 1948, 1948, printed ca. 1981 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.94 x 35.56 cm); Image: 7 3/8 x 11 in (18.7325 x 27.94 cm) Gift of Leonard A. Fink (Class of 1952), AC 1986.115

Morris Engel American, 1918–2005 Harlem Merchant, NYC, 1937, printed in 1980 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 16 x 20 in (40.6 x 50.8 cm); Image: 12 x 15 in (30.5 x 38.1 cm) Museum Purchase, AC 2000.379

Louis Faurer American, 1916–2001 Times Square, USA, 1950, 1950, printed in 1981 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.94 x 35.56 cm); Image: 7 1/16 x 10 1/2 in (17.93875 x 26.67 cm) Gift of Leonard A. Fink (Class of 1952), AC 1986.111

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Robert Frank American, born in Switzerland in 1924 White Tower, 14th Street, NYC, 1948 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 8 3/4 x 13 1/4 in (22.225 x 33.655 cm); Image: 8 11/16 x 13 5/16 in (22.06625 x 33.81375 cm) Gift of Paul Katz, AC 1997.28

Jerome Liebling American, 1924–2011 Toddy’s Café, 1964 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.9 x 35.6 cm); Image: 9 7/8 x 12 3/8 in (25.1 x 31.4 cm) Gift of Stanley and Diane Person, AC 2001.672.5

Lee Friedlander American, born in 1934 NYC, 1974, 1974, printed ca. 1976 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 13 7/8 in (27.94 x 35.2425 cm); Image: 7 9/16 x 11 1/4 in (19.2088 x 28.575 cm) Gift of Steven M. Jacobson (Class of 1953), AC 1985.8.18

Jerome Liebling American, 1924–2011 Young Girl, 1952 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 14 x 11 in (35.6 x 27.9 cm); Image: 10 1/8 x 10 1/8 in (25.7 x 25.7 cm) Gift of Stanley and Diane Person, AC 2001.672.3

Joel D. Levinson American, born in 1953 California Flea Market Series, Untitled #34, 1976 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 10 7/8 x 14 in (27.6225 x 35.56 cm); Image: 9 5/16 x 12 7/16 in (23.65375 x 31.59125 cm) Gift of Linda and John Hillman (Class of 1966), AC 2009.179

Mary Ellen Mark American, born in 1941 Biker with Jesus T-shirt, 6/1988, 1988, printed in 1992 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 13 7/8 x 11 in (35.2425 x 27.94 cm); Image: 10 1/2 x 10 1/2 in (26.67 x 26.67 cm) Gift of Stanley and Diane Person, AC 1993.53.5

Joel D. Levinson American, born in 1953 California Flea Market Series, Untitled #66, 1977 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.94 x 35.56 cm); Image: 9 7/8 x 10 1/4 in (25.0825 x 26.035 cm) Gift of Linda and John Hillman (Class of 1966), AC 2009.197

Joel Meyerowitz American, born in 1938 New Mexico (Indians in street), 1972 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.94 x 35.56 cm); Image: 8 7/8 x 13 1/2 in (22.5425 x 34.29 cm) Gift of Stanley and Diane Person, AC 2000.441.10

Joel Meyerowitz American, born in 1938 New Years Eve, NYC (Kiss me, stupid), 1965 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.94 x 35.56 cm); Image: 8 7/8 x 13 1/2 in (22.5425 x 34.29 cm) Gift of Stanley and Diane Person, AC 2000.441.11

Frank Paulin American, born in 1926 Times Square, New York City, 1956 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.9 x 35.6 cm); Image: 8 7/8 x 13 1/16 in (22.5 x 33.2 cm) Gift of Bruce and Silke Silverstein, AC 2010.19

Frank Paulin American, born in 1926 Eisenhower wins in USA, New York, 1956 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 14 x 11 in (35.6 x 27.9 cm); Image: 13 1/2 x 9 1/8 in (34.3 x 23.2 cm) Gift of Bruce and Silke Silverstein, AC 2010.18

Peter Sekaer American, born in Denmark, 1901–1950 Colored Movie Entrance, Anniston, Alabama, 1936 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 8 1/2 x 10 in (21.59 x 25.4 cm); Image: 7 1/4 x 9 1/2 in (18.415 x 24.13 cm) Purchase with Richard Templeton (Class of 1931) Photography Fund, AC 1991.21

Frank Paulin American, born in 1926 Fair-way, New Orleans, Louisiana, 1952 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.9 x 35.6 cm); Image: 10 1/2 x 13 3/16 in (26.7 x 33.5 cm) Gift of Bruce and Silke Silverstein, AC 2010.16 Frank Paulin American, born in 1926 I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, Times Square, New York City, 1957 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.9 x 35.6 cm); Image: 9 1/16 x 13 1/2 in (23 x 34.3 cm) Gift of Bruce and Silke Silverstein, AC 2010.20

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Aaron Siskind American, 1903–1991 Facade, Unoccupied Building, 1937 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 10 7/8 x 14 in (27.6225 x 35.56 cm); Image: 9 x 11 11/16 in (22.86 x 29.6863 cm) Gift of Leonard A. Fink (Class of 1952), AC 1984.74.2 Aaron Siskind American, 1903–1991 Grocery Store, 1940 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 14 x 10 7/8 in (35.56 x 27.6225 cm); Image: 8 3/4 x 8 1/4 in (22.225 x 20.955 cm) Gift of Leonard A. Fink (Class of 1952), AC 1985.79.5

Aaron Siskind American, 1903–1991 Peace Meals, 1937 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 14 x 10 7/8 in (35.56 x 27.6225 cm); Image: 11 1/8 x 7 3/4 in (28.2575 x 19.685 cm) Gift of Leonard A. Fink (Class of 1952), AC 1985.79.3

James Van Der Zee American, 1886–1983 Milk Booth for Harlem Children, ca. 1930 Photograph, mounted to cardboard Mount: 10 14/16 x 13 14/16 in (27.6 x 35.2 cm); Image: 5 7/16 x 9 in (13.8 x 22.9 cm) Collection of Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, AC 1983.126

John Szarkowski American, 1925–2007 Garrick Theatre, 1955, printed ca. 1983 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 14 x 11 in (35.56 x 27.94 cm); Image: 12 3/4 x 10 (32.385 x 25.4 cm) Bequest of Richard Templeton (Class of 1931), AC 1989.71

Weegee (Arthur H. Fellig) American, born in Austria, 1899–1968 Out at Three in the Morning, ca. 1940 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.94 x 35.56 cm); Image: 10 3/8 x 13 3/8 in (26.3525 x 33.9725 cm) Gift of Janet Borden, in memory of Allan P. Albert (Class of 1967), AC 1994.771

James Van Der Zee American, 1886–1983 First Photography Studio (135th Street), 1917 Photograph, mounted to cardboard Mount: 10 14/16 x 13 14/16 in (27.6 x 35.2 cm); Image: 6 11/16 x 8 9/16 in (17 x 21.7 cm) Collection of Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, AC 1983.127 James Van Der Zee American, 1886–1983 Funeral, WWI Veterans, ca. 1920 Photograph, mounted to cardboard Mount: 13 14/16 x 10 14/16 in (27.6 x 35.2 cm); Image: 8 3/4 x 6 1/4 in (22.2 x 15.9 cm) Collection of Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, AC 1983.128

Garry Winogrand American, 1928–1984 New York City, 1968, 1968, printed ca. 1978 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.94 x 35.56 cm); Image: 9 1/16 x 13 3/8 in (23.0188 x 33.9725 cm) Gift of Dr. Daniel C. Schuman, AC 1979.23.2 Garry Winogrand American, 1928–1984 New York City 1972, 1972, printed ca. 1978 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 x 14 in (27.94 x 35.56 cm); Image: 9 x 13 3/8 in (22.86 x 33.9725 cm) Gift of Dr. Daniel C. Schuman, AC 1979.23.11 83

Selected Bibliography I L I S T H E R E O N LY T H E S O U R C E S that were principal to the making of this book. This bibliography does not constitute a complete record of the pertinent texts available, nor is it a complete record of all the writings I consulted. It includes those texts upon which I formed my key ideas, and I intend it to provide guidance for those who wish to study further the topics featured in this catalogue.

Abel, Elizabeth. “Double Take: Photography, Cinema, and the Segregated Theater.” Critical Inquiry 34, no. S2 (Winter 2008): S2–S20. doi: 10.1086/529086. Barberie, Peter. Looking at Atget. New Haven: Philadelphia Museum of Art, in association with Yale University Press, 2005. Exhibition catalogue. Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978. See esp. “Photographic Message” and “Rhetoric of the Image.” Bogart, Michele H. Artists, Advertising, and the Borders of Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Cramsie, Patrick. The Story of Graphic Design: From the Invention of Writing to the Birth of Digital Design. New York: Abrams, 2010. Davis, Keith F. An American Century of Photography: From Dry-Plate to Digital; The Hallmark Photographic Collection. 2nd ed., rev. and enl. Kansas City, MO: Hallmark Cards, in association with Harry N. Abrams, 1999. Dietz, Lawrence. Soda Pop: The History, Advertising, Art, and Memorabilia of Soft Drinks in America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973. Elkins, James. The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing. San Diego: Harvest Books, 1997. ——— . On Pictures and the Words that Fail Them. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Evans, Walker. Walker Evans: Signs. Essay by Andrei Codrescu. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1998. Grundberg, Andy. Crisis of the Real: Writings on Photography. 3rd ed. New York: Aperture, 2010. Hill, John T. Signs of Life: Photographs by Peter Sekaer. Atlanta: High Museum of Art, with Steidl Publishers, Göttingen, in cooperation with Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, 2010. Exhibition catalogue.

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Hine, Thomas. The Total Package: The Evolution and Secret Meanings of Boxes, Bottles, Cans, and Tubes. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1995. Hoffman, Barry. The Fine Art of Advertising: Irreverent, Irrepressible, Irresistibly Ironic. New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2002. Hopkins, David. “Weegee and Warhol: Voyeurism, Shock and the Discourse on Criminality.” History of Photography 25, no. 4 (Winter 2001): 357–367. Hostetler, Lisa. Street Seen: The Psychological Gesture in American Photography, 1940–1959. Munich: Delmonico, in association with the Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI, 2009. Exhibition catalogue. Hunt, John Dixon, David Lomas, and Michael Corris. Art, Word and Image: Two Thousand Years of Visual/Textual Interaction. London: Reaktion Books, 2010. Hunter, Jefferson. Image and Word: The Interaction of Twentieth-Century Photographs and Texts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987. Koch, Lewis. Touchless Automatic Wonder: Found Text from the Real World. Madison, WI: Borderland Books, 2009. Malt, Barbara C., and Phillip Wolff. Words and the Mind: How Words Capture Human Experience. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Marchand, Roland. Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Milwaukee Art Museum. Word as Image: American Art, 1960–1990. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee Art Museum, 1990. Exhibition catalogue. Mora, Gilles. The Last Photographic Heroes: American Photographers of the Sixties and Seventies. New York: Abrams, 2007. Morley, Simon. Writing on the Wall: Word and Image in Modern Art. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. North, Michael. Camera Works: Photography and the Twentieth-Century Word. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Photo League, and National Film and Photo League. Photo Notes. Rochester, NY: Visual Studies Workshop, 1977. Schmandt-Besserat, Denise. When Writing Met Art: From Symbol to Story. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. Scott, Clive. The Spoken Image: Photography and Language. London: Reaktion Books, 1999.

Seelig, Thomas, and Urs Stahel, eds. The Ecstasy of Things: From the Functional Object to the Fetish in 20th Century Photographs. Göttingen: Steidl Verlag, 2004. Exhibition catalogue. Slemmons, Rod. “Conversations: Text and Image.” MoCP Blog. Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, 2004. Accessed January 4, 2012. http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2004/02/conversations_t.php. Szarkowski, John. Winogrand: Figments from the Real World. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1988. Exhibition catalogue. Tucker, Anne. Louis Faurer. London: Merrell, in association with The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2002. Exhibition catalogue. Varnedoe, Kirk, and Adam Gopnik. Modern Art and Popular Culture: Readings in High and Low. New York: Harry N. Abrams/The Museum of Modern Art, 1990. Exhibition catalogue. Wright, Jordan M. Campaigning for President. New York: Smithsonian Books/Collins, 2008. Yochelson, Bonnie, and Berenice Abbott. Berenice Abbott: Changing New York. New York: New Press/Museum of the City of New York, 1997.

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M A G G I E D E T H L O F F is the 2010-12 Andrew W. Mellon Post-Baccalaureate Curatorial Fellow at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. After graduating from Smith College in 2010 with a BA in Art History, Maggie has been researching photographs in the Meadâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s collection and integrating them into public programs, exhibitions, and collection displays. A contributor to the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College Collection Guide, Maggie is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan currently living in Amherst, Massachusetts, with her pet ball python, Tallulah.

me a d a r t muse um a mhe r s t col l ege